


A.N.D.R.O.M.E.D.A.

by Avaquet



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Canon, Canonical Character Death, Chaptered, Character Death, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Dark Comedy, Death, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Roller Coaster, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epic Friendship, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Family, Family Feels, First Contact, First Crush, First Kiss, First Love, First Meetings, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gore, Happy Ending, Headcanon, Heavy Angst, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Humor, Injury, Interspecies, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, Light Angst, Major Character Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, POV Original Female Character, Past Tense, Permanent Injury, Realistic, Serious Injuries, Temporary Character Death, Tragedy, long work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2018-12-18 20:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11882625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avaquet/pseuds/Avaquet
Summary: "AdventuresNight andDay,RoamingOverMiles,ExcitingDiscoveriesAlight."Sara finds herself in a completely new galaxy, at first she followed her heart, but as things unfold, when the seven golden worlds seen 600 years ago turned out to be more of the seven circles of hell, she feels deep regret. On top of that, she gets handed a position of power and she must learn how to lead as she is used to being more of a follower herself. Angst, falling in love, friendships, death, complications all await her and much much more.This is going to be an extremely long fic following my OC Sara Talia Ryder through her adventures in Andromeda. It does follow closely to realism and canon along with many different Headcanons. FPOV. It follows a lot of what happens in the game, but with a lot more 'meat' to it, and the things that happen between the loading screens or travel time. I do have proof readers but feel free to comment a critique or something that stood out, or anything that you liked!Feel free to follow the journey of Sara Ryder!





	1. Prologue (Before the Journey)

**Author's Note:**

> **_2185 CE, February 15 ESD_ ** **_  
_ ** **_Armstrong Station - Luna, Sol System_ **

 

I packed my personal crate with only a few items. The weight limit was strict, but some things can be overlooked being a part of the Pathfinder crew. My dad, Alec Ryder, was a former N7 before being chosen as humanity’s pathfinder for Ark Hyperion. About 20,000 humans signed up for the Andromeda Initiative, and I am one of them. 100,000 people all together joined the Initiative, 20,000 per ark. My fraternal twin brother, Scott, is also a part of the Pathfinder crew. We will all be meeting at the Luna shuttles soon to depart to Hyperion. Today is the day, my final hours in the Milky Way galaxy before a frozen sleep. I've paced the room many times, fidgeting, and overthinking. As much as I love the adventure and exploration at my feet, I'm leaving everything behind. 

I checked my packing list over and over again. Many memories I need to keep. A new multi-purpose journal that I handcrafted specifically for this journey. Along with a handmade scrapbook or photo album six pages long, or ten front and back with two covers. These are items that won't count against my weight limit because I told the authorities of the Initiative that it is for documentation. Items that do count include: an explosion paper box, various essential oils along with various oils and butters, extra clothes, headphones, art supplies, a necklace dedicated to my cat, Echo, and my violin. I could've carried a lot more if I didn't take the instrument, but it has helped me through many difficult times in my life. Been playing her for over ten years, ever since middle school. 

_ Everything is in place and ready to go. I'm going to be fine, it's all going to be fine. _ I headed out the main lobby to the shuttle launch pad. The P.A. rang out, warning us to be vacuum ready in the next couple minutes. So, I fastened on my light armor, making sure every lock was tightly secured before finally sliding on my helmet and sealing myself inside.

"Name and date of birth, please." A man standing at the security center demanded as he stopped me.

"Sara Talia Ryder. 21st of March, 2163." I said.

"Pathfinder team? You're assigned to the priority shuttle. We've been waiting on you." He said as his partner took my personal crate and headed toward the loading bay.

"I'm that late, huh?" I chuckled nervously in response.

"Not too late. The rest of the team is already on the shuttle." He motioned me to follow him.

I walked with him. "My dad included?"

"Pathfinder Ryder was already aboard the Hyperion before anyone else had arrived." He responded.

_ Great. Dad isn't even going to tell us good luck or anything. _ I pursed my lips before speaking, "Ah."

"Alright. This is your shuttle. When you get on, I'll tell the pilot to take you all away." He talked into his omni-tool.

"Thank you." I nodded at him.

"Good luck, Ryder." He said as he went back to his post.

"You, too." I sighed, knowing that he wouldn’t hear it.

I stepped onto the shuttle and was greeted with a clunky hug from Scott. "Thought you bailed on us."

"Nah, adventure of a lifetime, remember?" I took my seat next to him. The shuttle was full of other people, helmets hiding their faces. Among the hidden faces, I noticed one in slimmer armor staring at us curiously through her plated visor, but Scott’s voice drew my attention away again.

"You'd think they'd at least give us better looking gear." He threw his hands up.

The shuttle took off. A slight jolt from the liftoff and we're in space. "It's their colors. White and blue."

"Yeah, but, too much white, you know?" He scoffed.

The female I noticed earlier stood up and walked over to us. "Ah, you’re the Ryder twins, correct? My name is Cora Harper."

We each shook her hand. "Pleasure to meet you, Cora. I think I've heard your name a couple of times." I readjusted in my seat.

"Your father went on many missions with me. I'm his second in command." Her voice sounded confident as she spoke.

"Oh." Scott slumped.

"So, Cora, you excited?" I tried to make my voice perkier.

"Oh, definitely. You?" She responded.

"Nervous." I chuckled. I was never the best at socializing, and this trip wasn’t helping.

"Hey, come look outside. Might calm you down. Nice beautiful view of Earth." 

Scott and I followed Cora over to the window, the view was slightly tinted from our helmets. Other people on the shuttle moved closer to the window to get one last view. 

A blue and green planet sprinkled and swirled with white, all against a black background dotted with glittering lights. This is the last time; my last view of my homeworld, and then it's no longer home. 2.5 million light-years away on Habitat 7 will be home. 600 years our biological clocks will be frozen as we venture out.  _ Mom. _ My lips quivered. Suddenly, my view of Earth was solemn. Grief. A minor chord plays in the back of my head against the black and blue view.

"I miss Mom." I whispered out.

"Me too, sis. Me too." He said as he placed a hand on my back.

Cora looked over at us. "Your dad told me that she died not too long ago. She'd be proud of both of you for making this journey."

"Thanks. And I hope so." I answered back. Silent and hidden tears rolled down my face, as I let go of the loving memories of Mom.  _ This will be a new start. A chance to start over in life. Wake up with a schedule and an organized life for once. My chin held up high. Mysteries to explore. New sights and sounds to associate with. A new song, a new painting, a new book. _ A quivered smile ran across my face.

The rest of the journey was silent. Thoughts clouded the air as Earth disappeared from view when we docked into the Ark. We all slumped to different lockers to take off our armor. All of us wore the same attire, consisting of white long-sleeved shirt and pants with the AI Andromeda Initiative logo and a light blue as a secondary color. Except Cora, her colors were strangely reversed.

A scientist helped us find our designated cryo bay, which also functioned as a medical bay. The closer we got to those cryo pods, the more my heart sped up. I felt slight tremors throughout my body. There was a giant hologram screen at the back of the med bay before the turn into the cryo room, sifting through different pictures of the worlds that await us. Seven golden worlds, seven planets. The pictures ranged from tropical, to deserts, to highlands, and more. Beautiful views.

"Hey, sis." Scott broke the silence.

"Huh?" I glanced at him.

"You may want to take out your ponytail or it might get uncomfortable." He nudged me.

"Oh, right," I chuckled.

As we turned into the room with all the pods, I let loose my hair, and felt the freedom of movement against my shoulders. The room was chilly, long, and tall, with pods everywhere. The scientist divided us up into groups, Scott and I together, and the rest were away at different sections of the room. Scott and I were placed in the very back of the room next to the big circular logo on the wall that said Cryogenics on it. Two pods were summoned down and lingered in front of us while the scientist checked our vitals.

"Nervous you two? Don't worry. We all are. A team of the Ark’s best engineers and scientists checked the ship and pods multiple times. Don't worry, this part is safe." He pats us on the back.

"So, Scott." I smiled.

"Sara." He smirked.

"See you in a few hundred years?" I nudged him.

"You better." He nodded.

He gave me a tight hug before we stepped into the pod. The inside was cold and frosty. There was a little window for me to look out of as the door closed. I leaned back up against the stiff cushions, feeling my heart pound in my chest. I grip onto the cushions and tried to take slower breaths, but the worry of things going wrong whilst I was asleep, or if something bad were to happen to Scott or Dad kept my breathing rapid.  _ It'll be fine. And hey, if we do die while in cryo, we wouldn't feel a thing.  _ The scientist gave me a thumbs up before walking away and things started to become hazy and slow. Slower, hazier, darker, colder-

Silence.


	2. The Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara finally wakes up in Andromeda, but an unexpected event occurred that might make the journey feel like a mistake.
> 
> ** This chapter is long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~I watched a person bounce off the ceiling gently. The only things that weren't floating was the medical beds that were connected to the floor and the sides of the walls and up to the ceiling. Thankfully, I stayed in one general place the whole time. More of a horizontal levitation than floating somewhere.~~
> 
> *This chapter can be skipped, as it is the same as the beginning of the game but with a few twists and more internal thought and emotion. There is extra dialogue in areas, but the beginning of the game still has the same premise.

**_634 years later. Date: 0 hour 0 day_ **

**_Andromeda galaxy, Heleus cluster - Habitat 7, Eriksson system._ **

I gasped and jolted up. Light had filled my vision and blinded me, causing a slight burn at the back of my eyes. It had only felt like a couple of seconds had passed.  _ Were we really here? _ I saw lights and further away scientists began waking up more people. "Holy shit." I muttered. "We made it." Two scientists came over when I tried to stand up. I was excited but also a bit light headed, causing me to fall back down onto my pod.

A male scientist grasped my shoulders. "Deep breaths. You're gonna want to take it easy."

The female scientist typed on her datapad.

"I've been taking it easy for 600 years." I tried to retort.

"You mean 634 years?" She smirked.

"Ryder, Sara. Recon Specialist, Pathfinder Mission Team." She read from her datapad.

I sat in silence while I was being checked over. Thoughts had still been hazy, my body had felt like it had just woken up directly from sleep paralysis. I was warmer than when I went into cryo, but still a bit chilled.

"Pathfinder Team, eh? The ones finding us a home." The male scientist stated.

The feeling of fatigue had hit me. I dropped my head and was struggling to keep my eyes open. Everything just seemed so damn foggy. I tried taking slow and deep breaths.

"Can you make it somewhere tropical? Nice warm ocean, summer year-round..." The woman winked.

Maybe they had noticed that everything that they said flew over my head. I tried keeping my eyes up to look at them but failed most attempts.

The male scientist helped me up by my arm. Legs felt like jelly. "How about we get her a cup of coffee, first?" The female scientist grabbed my other arm and we walked slowly.

_ Ugh, coffee. _ "Do they have anything else?"

"Not a coffee fan?" I shook my head as she responded, “Ah, well good news is that the coffee idea was a joke. You’ll be getting a trip to the bathroom and vitamins.”

"Energy supplements?" I stumbled a bit and they had caught me.

"Your body just woke up from a 600 year nap. Completely turned off, even most brain functions. Your body would appreciate liquids and easily digestible paste." He retorted.

_ So that's why it didn't actually feel like 600 years. How could I dream or even knew time existed without proper brain functions? Yeah okay, I'm waking up. _ "How long?"

"Until?" The woman asked.

"I can eat properly." I finished.

"Depends. Dr. T'Perro will be taking a look at you in the med bay." The man responded as he pulled out a data pad.

"Uh, who?" I tilted my head to try and crack my neck. 

"Lexi. Dr. Lexi T'Perro." He clarified.

"Sounds like an asari name." I hoped my judgment wasn’t too off.

"She is an asari." He smiled.

_ Figures.  _ We had approached the end of the cryo bay and into the blinding light of the medical ward. I had felt more comfortable when I straightened up while walking. The giant hologram hadn't changed, still played the same photos with a voice in the background talking optimistically about golden worlds, Pathfinder Team, Arks, and everything else related to the Initiative. Another person had come by to drop off some water and the two scientists sat me down at the med bay table before they walked back to Cryogenics.

As I drank the water, I watched the pictures on the screen flip through again. An image of a waterfall and a small lake surrounded by green, blue, yellow, and purple plants had caught my attention. Seemed peaceful and lovely, but I knew it wasn't Habitat 7, those pictures were different.

"The selection process saw the Andromeda Initiative evaluate thousands of potential habitable planets-" I zoned out the hologram screen voice. I like a good attitude, but it just sounded so fake, annoyingly fake. Like an instrument trying to play the highest note but failing.

The picture had changed from a peaceful sound to an asteroid field of some kind.  _ These aren't the same pictures we saw in the debrief. There was no asteroid field or picture of  that waterfall. Does the VI update as time goes on? How are we getting the updates? Does the Ark have a long range scanner? Was that a planet of some kind or was that asteroid field always there? That looks like an asteroid hitting a planet, but, damn I hope I'm wrong. _

I was so lost in thought as I was slumped over the bed, ignoring my water, and stared at the vid screen, that I didn't notice the asari walk right past my view and stop away from the bed.

"Sara Ryder? Let's get you checked out." I heard her voice, soft spoken and very gentle. Calm.

I looked up at her. "Huh?"

"I said, let's get you checked out." I straightened up as she scanned me. "Look here." The orange glow from her omni tool scan was a bit much for my eyes currently.

People rushed past us. A quick tempo ghosted the room. The sound of footsteps against the floor like large ants playing drums. The room was noisy and incoherent. Colors flashed in my mind, a mix of blue and white swirling frantically, while a yellow splashed into the mix. Like a rushing waterfall being beaten by the sun.  _ Would prefer that sound over this. _ The vid screen was still talking as well.  _ Not the wake up call I was expecting, but at least I woke up. _

Lexi felt under my jaw and around my neck. Made my lower face feel a bit funky. I stretched my jaw afterwards. I looked back over at the vid screen.

"Now you are a part of the first wave of arks arriving in Andromeda: our new home for humanity." Basically, the VI told us not to mess up, or we all die.  _ Great. _

Lexi scoffed as she typed in my info into her datapad. "Makes it sound so easy, doesn't it?" She sounded just as annoyed by it. I was glad I wasn't the only one.

I glanced back up at her with a smirk. "I hope not. I signed up for a little adventure before we settle down." I do like adventure. Annoying VIs and people, not so much.

She raised her eyebrows. "Well, buckle up. Sounds like you'll get your wish."

"Really?" I said as she tilted her head. "Yeah? Okay." I hoped for the good adventure and not one filled with death and destruction. Like what happened back in the Milky Way when a reaper attacked the Citadel. Thankfully, I wasn't on the Citadel for that. Instead of a bustling city life filled to the brim with people, I wanted to delve into caves and explore unknown waters. Scan trees and plants. Play in the mud looking for bacteria samples. Finding out the evolutionary history of a planet and the mysteries within the mantle. Running from wild storms in an unknown jungle. Just thinking about all of that caused me to smile deeper.

I noticed more people rushing around, double checking and double taking, backtracking. Lexi looked down at her datapad while she held up her hand. "Over here, now." I looked at it as she watched me intently. She moved her hand across her body and my eyes followed. "The Pathfinder wants you all on your feet right away. He said 'mission-ready within the hour.’" She spoke boldly.

"Any idea why?" I asked as my expression changed to concerned.

"No, but I'm guessing that's where your 'adventure' comes in." She did not seem amused. I purse my lips in response and looked away while she updated her info. "Okay." She walked out of the way over to the nearby console. A man in the opposite bed from me smiled and waved. I smiled back but my attention was at Lexi. "Everything checks out. Just one more thing before I send you on your way... Let's test your SAM implant. SAM, are you monitoring?" My brows furrowed in curiosity. "SAM? Are you online?"

I heard a hologram open behind me. A blue pixelated orb glowed behind me. A male voice, almost monotone, but obviously computer generated started talking. "Yes, Dr. T'Perro. Good morning, Sara. Are you feeling well?"

"I just need a second to get my bearings. Uh...what's this about my implant?" I looked over my shoulder to face Lexi and the AI.

Lexi turned around to face me. "A routine check. After being in stasis, we want to make sure the connection's still live." I tilted my head up in understanding and looked forward again.

"As the team's mission computer, your well-being is my primary concern." SAM assured me.

"Assuming the implants work as advertised. SAM sees what you see...in theory. We won't know for sure until we get you in the field."  _ Oh, that's comforting. _ "How are you doing, otherwise?" She looked at me with a curious gaze.

_ A bit overwhelmed, tired of talking, tired of sitting, tired in general.  _ I slumped back over and stared at my water for a minute before answering. "I'm ready to get to it." I said unenthusiastically.

"Readings confirmed." SAM announced. "I detect an increased level of adrenaline in your system. The neural implant is functioning properly."

I stretched my face and popped my neck. "Maybe it's the nerves." I muttered under my breath.

Lexi approached me. "You're all done. Let's get you on your way." She placed her hand on my shoulder as I stood up slowly. "Though you may want to hang around while we revive your brother." She pointed at his stasis pod. "It always helps to see a familiar fa-"

The lights around us flickered. A deep and flat noise sounded from outside the Hyperion. I looked around, heart racing. "I... don't like the sound of that." My eyes widened as I became more alert. The noise rang throughout the Ark and the lights flickered more.

A loud bang and static sound carried throughout the ship. Suddenly, the Ark felt like it had been hit. Everyone was knocked off balance and fell to the floor. My hands hit the floor hard but I stopped my nose from smashing into the ground. I saw Lexi's datapad fly out of her hands as she fell to her side. My hands throbbed from the impact. 

The Ark shook violently again as lights frantically flickered and electrical connections sparked. Some screams were heard. I tried to calm down my rapid breathing, but there was nowhere to run or hide in space. If we were under attack, the Ark had no defenses and 20,000 people in stasis. The shaking made it impossible for anyone to stand up. I kept getting knocked to the floor with each rattle. I heard a few electrical sockets pop and consoles fried. Glass broke and the sound of electricity violently sparking along the metal walls, like nails scraping against glass or chalkboard. Colors flashed in my head from the sound, a mix of red and yellow cracking against each other in a battle of dominance.

Finally, after an eternity of jarring, the Ark settled and the lights stabilized. We all tried to get to our feet, but gravity had shifted. A cryo pod came screeching down my way. I flattened myself against the floor, unsure of how to avoid it and then it flew over my head. Suddenly, I realized I was floating. Gravity didn't just shift. It turned off. I was lucky, the pod could've hit me in the head full force.

I grunted as I floated upward, disorientated. People spun around, upside-down and every which way direction. "What's happening?" Lexi asked.

"I don't know. Just hang on!" I yelled, trying to sound confident.  _ Hang on, we’re floating here!  _ The man who waved at me earlier was doing violently fast backflips in place as he floated, trying to dodge the top of the overhang from the bed. Hopefully he didn't hit his head.

The captain came over the loudspeaker, "Engineering, report!"

Doctors and scientists gave out advice to the floating people.

"Gravity in cryo bay is offline!" Someone replied to the captain.

"I'm almost inside! Hold on!" A familiar, commanding, feminine voice came over the loudspeaker.

I watched a person bounce off the ceiling gently. The only things that weren't floating was the medical beds that were connected to the floor and the sides of the walls with a long headboard going up to the ceiling. Thankfully, I stayed in place the whole time, I had more of a horizontal levitation than floating to somewhere.

I watched as a familiar face came through the door on the other side of the room. Her hair, unlike before when it was shaved to one side and draped over the other, looked like she was underwater and sprawled out. She swung around the door frame and cautiously floated to the console. "This is Cora! I'm at the cryo bay! Brace for a reset..." She had hit a few buttons and everyone came crashing down to the floor. She landed on her feet, and I slammed into the hard, cold floor from about ten feet up. Pain shot through my body, and I felt some joints pop releasing pressure.

I had landed almost flat against the floor, my forearms had stopped my face from kissing the ground. The fall caused me to make a loud  _ oof _ , as air was forced out of my lungs. Everything stung, making me gasp a grunted sound. 

"Everyone okay?" Cora looked at us.

"I think so." Lexi looked at me and shrugged.

"What happened?" I breathed out.

Cora walked over to Lexi and me. "We're not sure. Sensors are scrambled." We slowly stood up. "But it's good to see you're up. Feels like centuries since we spoke."

I planned to comment on her little joke but my dad had taken over the loudspeaker. "This is the Pathfinder. Mission teams, continue preparations. Cora, Ryders, report to the bridge."

"You heard him, let's get-" Cora was interrupted from a person across the room.

"Uh," a scientist calls over from Scott's pod, "we have a problem over here. It's Scott Ryder."

My heart sank immediately. His pod was sparking and obvious damage showed all over. I felt the lump that had formed in my throat and my body had gotten a large rush of adrenaline.  _ Oh fuck... is he... no. Please, no.  _ My mouth gaped open in fear and confusion. I ran over to the pod, followed by Cora and Lexi. I then held onto the nearby console, ready for the worst of news.

"What's wrong?" Cora asked.

"I don't know. Have to check it out." Lexi responded.

The male scientist from before held up his hand, "Give it a second for the processor to sync."

"Did the seals break?" Cora questioned.

My heart pounded inside my chest. My arms and legs shook as it felt like my blood went cold. I felt the burn in my eyes forming tears.  _ My brother... Scott, please! No... _

"No. Physical integrity looks good." He responded.

Relief flooded my body as he said those words. My blood felt warm again, but my body still shook and my heart was still screaming. I wobbled over and swallowed hard.

"Sara." Lexi looked at me.

"Is my brother okay?" I choked out. I let a few scared tears fall when I sniffled.

"Scott's fine. His vitals are strong, but the revival procedure was interrupted." Lexi looked back at Scott’s pod.

"What does that mean?" Before she could answer, I snapped, "When can he wake up?"

"We don't want to rush it. SAM?" She pulled out her omni-tool, ready to write down info.

I walked up and ran my fingers across the glass, electric burns made it impossible to see his face.

"My connection to Scott's implant was suspended. However, his pulse, respiration, and brain activity are all normal." SAM responded. I let out a deep breath and placed my palm on the pod for support.

Lexi put her hand on my shoulder so I'd stand back up. "To be on the safe side, we'll need to keep him in a low-level coma for a while, then let his body regain consciousness naturally." I continued to look down at his pod. "He'll be fine." She assured me.

My smile was shaky and my tears had dried. "Glad to hear it." I responded as level-headed as possible.

Cora stepped up. "Thanks, Lexi. Keep us updated. Ryder, I'll wait for you at the door whenever you're ready to go." I wasn't ready to leave just yet, but Cora walked off.

"How do you want to handle this?" The scientist asked.

Lexi responded, "Keep him in the pod for now. Round the clock monitoring. We don't know if he's in true stasis anymore."

"Right. So parts of the body could be waking up.” The scientist clarified.

"But others aren't. We can't be sure just yet." Lexi continued, checking over the data.

I approached the pod again and placed my hand on the outside again. "Scott, please. You're strong. You can do this."

"Don't worry, Ryder. We'll take care of him. He'll make it." Lexi assured me.

I nodded when I stood back up.  _ How many more are in his condition? I need to check some pods. _ The pod next to Scott's was fine. 

"And if necessary, add boosters to the line. We can't risk respiratory arrest." Was the last thing I heard from Lexi before I had walked away.  _ I need to continue forward. Especially for Scott. _

I headed for the cryo bay to check more pods. A woman examining the vid screen saw me and said, "It sounds amazing, doesn't it? Right up until you lose gravity."

"Yeah. What do you think happened?"

"Oh, I have no idea. I've dreamed about this my whole life. I sure hope it matches the brochure." The woman said.

"Are you doubting?" I asked.

"Well, we did hit something that we didn't see when we examined Heleus back in the Milky Way. And Hyperion lost gravity for a moment there."

"True. What's going on over here?" I pointed at the hologram screen.

"Just making sure the information VI is working. You can test it out if you want. Some things have changed since the briefs." She warned me.

_ I guess it would be good to refresh my knowledge. _ I approached the screen and it talked. "Hi, there. I'm Jien Garson, founder of the Andromeda Initiative. I'm here to welcome you to a whole new galaxy. The good news is, the hard part's over. We're here! If you have any questions now, just ask."

I really didn't want to be talking to this thing, my curiosity was piqued. The pictures from the briefs were different, and maybe the VI has status updates I should know about. "Update me on the general info of the Andromeda Initiative."

"The Andromeda Initiative encompasses all colonization efforts, including arks, Pathfinders, outposts, and the central support hub, the Nexus." The hologram VI replied happily.

I placed two fingers on the bridge of my nose and muttered, "This is not what I meant." I looked back up. "Status update."

"The current location of the Nexus is: unknown. Status of outposts are: unknown."

My brows had furrowed in response.  _ We should've known about the Nexus by now. _

I was interrupted by the VI of Garson again. "Hi, there. I'm Jien Garson, founder of the Andromeda Initiative."  _ I know this by now, I didn't go through seven weeks of training to not know your damn name. _

The lady came back over with her omni tool out. "That's not supposed to play."

"I think it's important we take a moment to reflect on the principles that brought all of us together." It continued.

"I think it's important for you to shut up for just a moment." I gritted my teeth.

"It started with a vision of a better future; a vision that you shape." I felt like banging my head against the wall.

"Stop talking." I rolled my eyes.

"Life in Andromeda can be anything we dare to dream, and I'm proud to help make those dreams come true." It continued.

"You're a nightmare right now. VI, change topics."

"It's not responding properly. Hold on." The woman responded.

"Drop me a note sometimes. I'd love to hear how we're doing." The VI screen responded.

"You know what?" I raised my voice. "So would I."

"Your current location is Ark Hyperion, housing the human population. Ark Paarchero, the salarian vessel, confirmed departure in 2185." I groaned.  _ This was not the information I was looking for. _ I chuckled.  _ This is not the droid I'm looking for. _ "The asari ship, Ark Leusinia, confirmed departure that same year, as did the turian Ark Natanus, embarking in 2185."

"Hey, what's your name?" I turned to the redheaded woman.

"Heyes. You?"

"Sara Ryder. Think this thing will be fixed soon?" I asked with a chuckle.

"Gods I hope so. It will be extremely beneficial to people waking up if it wasn't so frustrating right now."

"Yeah, and I need to be ready soon for the Pathfinder."

"The Pathfinder is responsible for exploring and assessing new worlds for outpost placement and settlement." The VI had taken my words to mean a question. All I did was facepalm. "Each ark is led by a Pathfinder who represents their species."

"No, really?" I replied, sarcastically.

"The active-duty Pathfinder assigned to Ark Hyperion is: Alec Ryder. Current duty roster shows you are assigned to the Pathfinder mission team, Specialist Ryder."

"Tell me the current mission status, then." I commanded.

"At present, Ark Hyperion has arrived in the Heleus Cluster. Further mission updates are offline due to technical difficulties."

"Oh that was helpful." My annoyance with the VI grew more intense every second.

"As Recon Specialist, you are tasked with supporting the authentication of golden world sites through exploration, mapping and scientific analysis. Currently, you are to report for duty on the command bridge." It tried to remind me.

"Yes, I know. Is there any new data about the golden worlds?"  _ Like those pictures? _

"The selection process saw the Andromeda Initiative evaluate thousands of potential habitable planets within the galaxy." I threw my head back and rolled my eyes in frustration. "After discovering an unusually high ratio of potential candidates or 'golden worlds,' the Heleus Cluster was selected as our destination. Now you are a part of the first wave of arks arriving in Andromeda: our new home for humanity."

"Yes I know! Current data on the golden worlds... please." I sighed.  _ Giving up on this thing might be a better option. _

"Once the Pathfinder team's assessment is complete, Habitat 7 has been selected as the most likely candidate for colonization."

I groaned. "So, data unknown then? No more, please."

The info wall screen turned back to flipping through pictures.  _ Now that headache is done with, I need to check on the other pods. _ I sighed as I turned to walk away from that nuisance. I then speed walked to the cryo bay and scanned the pods for vitals, my way of helping out around here as people wake up. A man was slumped over coughing, a scientist helping him to his feet.

"Nice and easy, just take deep breaths." She calmly told him.

"Was I... floating?" He asked.

She nervously laughed. "Had a bit of a hiccup with the gravity."

"What... day... when is it?" He stuttered, rolling his neck.

"It's been 600 years. We're in Andromeda." Her voice stayed quite calm.

"Damn. It worked?" He looked up at her.

"So far, so good. How do you feel?" She brought up her omni-tool and did a quick scan.

I worked down the line of cryo pods checking vitals. So far everyone seems okay.

"Like I've got the world's worst hangover."

"Lucas Greer, correct?" She asked for confirmation.

"Yeah." He nodded with a dry swallow.  _ I imagine we are all thirsty right now. _

"They need you on the Pathfinder mission team. Let's get you ready to go."

"So soon?"

"Probably has to do with whatever knocked out the gravity." She put away her omni-tool. 

_ Shit... _

For the rest of that conversation I was out of earshot. I was still going down the line of pods checking each one. Can never be too sure. I approached another conversation between a scientist and a man just out of cryo.

"Woah, that was... weird."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't remember dreaming or anything. One minute I'm in the Milky Way getting ready to sleep, and the next..."

"You're two million light years away."

"No joke- we really flew that far?"

"We really did. Welcome to Andromeda."

"Got any food? I'm starving."

"We'll start you on some liquid protein."

"No pancakes?"  _ I'm more of a waffle person. The little squares hold so much of that deliciously bad syrup.  _

"Your digestive system hasn't handled solid food in over six centuries. We need to go slow."

"Right. Man, just hearing that out loud, six centuries."

"Yup. All without pancakes."

"What about liquid pancakes?"

"Sorry- it's mushy, milky stuff. Tastes like paste."  _ Ew... _

"Well, you're not getting a tip."

I had approached the end of the bay and a pod was sparking. The technician called for support, I scanned it, thankfully no one was in it. Thankfully I wasn't in it, because that was my pod, and it was completely fried.  _ What if... if that was me, I would've been dead. No, no, don't think about it. I'm alive. Now I need to report. _ I walked out of the cryo bay and back into the med bay.

I bumped into someone. "Sorry I'm-"

"Message from Captain Dunn." She handed me the datapad. "It's regarding the situation." Then promptly walked off to other people.

_ Seems urgent. _ I turned on the datapad to read:

_ Attention Hyperion personnel: _

_ After a 600-year voyage, the good news is we're exactly where we're supposed to be: We have arrived in the Heleus Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy, year 2819. All stasis medical personnel should report to duty immediately. Give the Pathfinder Mission team revival priority, and prep the members for field reconnaissance. _

_ Reports of an unusual celestial phenomenon in the cluster are being investigated. Updates to follow. _

_ Captain Dunn _

That took me aback.  _ 2819? Damn.  _ I placed the datapad on the nearby medical bed.

"Did that just happen? The world turned upside down? Is this a dream?"

_ Oh, Mr. Floaty man. _ I walked over and crossed my arms. He acknowledged me.

The male doctor scanned him. "It left a nasty bump on your head. Let me look."

"First few minutes in Andromeda, and we're already crashing the car." He chuckled.

"What? Did you expect this to be easy?"

"No, but I figured any scars could wait 'til we land. Well?"

"Well what?"

"My head, Doc."

"No obvious contusions to your brain. Looks nice and pink."

He sat up immediately. "Wait wha- the cut's that deep?"

The doctor chuckled. "No, just kidding. Checking for a concussion. Your cognitive awareness seems okay."

I chortled. The other man scoffed. "Uh... right. Where'd you get your degree, Doc?"

"Oh, no need. They'll let anyone be a doctor around here. High demand."

"What?" The high pitch in his voice made me snort. He looked over like I was insane.

"Good. Your auditory response seems normal, too."

"Ugh. I need some coffee. They have some, right?" 

"Aren't you on the Pathfinder team?"

"Yeah."

"Then you've probably had enough. No time for pit stops." The doctor looked at me. "Enjoy your nap, Ryder? Don't think I'll need sleep for the rest of my life."

"Maybe another five minutes, or a decade wouldn't have hurt." I responded.

He laughed in response. "Doctor Carlyle. Harry Carlyle."

"Ah, you know me, it seems." I shifted my weight.

"Sara T. Ryder? Yup. Dr. T'Perro checked you out, correct?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, Ryder!" Mr. Floaty spoke up. "Hell of a wake up call, huh? Wasn't expecting that five minutes after stasis."

"Makes two of us. How's the head?" I grinned.

"Sore. In pain. Thanks for checking in, though."

"Hang in there, alright?" I nodded toward him.

"Yeah. You, too."

"Talk to you later, Carlyle." I waved as I turned away.

"Hopefully not because you need a patch. Talk to you later."

It's no surprise to me that people know my name. My dad was an N7 officer, created SAM, and is the Pathfinder of the human ark. The only bad side is, I don't know anyone else here.  _ Damn, that means the only people I can truly talk to are either the Pathfinder or my brother who is stuck in a coma.  _ That thought had hit hard. As far as I knew, all of my closest friends were in the Milky Way. Talk about a completely new start. I felt intimidated, scared, and challenged. Socializing was not my biggest skill and always made me nervous. Now, around close friends, it always felt like I had the confidence level of a bull, cracking jokes left and right without a care in the world. If someone had looked at me weirdly, then I wouldn't have cared. But here... it felt different. I guess it didn't really sink in exactly how much I had left behind. I imagined Dad would be too busy to talk.  _ Scott is in a damn coma, and all these people... as nice as they seem... I don't know them. And how do they automatically view the Pathfinder's daughter? Daughter of an N7, a genius who made SAM. How do they see me? How much more difficult will socializing be? Finally, how many people will be disappointed to learn my true self? _

The thoughts zoned out when I saw a datapad flashing unread underneath a flipped table. I grabbed it and read the following message from Jien Garson: 

_ Hello, Traveler, and welcome to your first day in Andromeda! This is the dawn of a new era for all of us. As you recover from stasis, know that you're in good hands. In a few short hours, you'll be leaving the Hyperion and joining thousands of your fellow colonists as you choose your fortunes and build the new life you've always dreamed about. It's been a long wait; but I promise you it will be worth it. _

_ Jien Garson _

_ Founder: Andromeda Initiative _

I placed the datapad onto the medical bed. It wasn't something I needed to read, because I could already tell that things weren't going to plan. I walked towards the exit.

"Well, the gravity loss probably means something tripped the generators." There was a conversation between two men in medical beds.

"What would cause it?"

"Something big. The generators are durable. It would take a hell of a lot to overload them."

"Well, on the bright side, no projectile vomiting to worry about. No one's eaten in over 600 years. So, what'd they tell you about the situation?"

"The obvious. Suit up and get ready to go."

"Same here. Did they tell you where we're going?"

"Nope. Just to have the shuttles prepped to fly."

"Man, we're a long way from home. Still getting used to it."

"Where're you from?"

"Toronto.”

"Earthborn, huh? Colony man myself. Eden Prime."

"Wasn't there some trouble some time ago? Fighting?"

"Yeah." There was solemness in his voice. "Lost a few friends. I had figured it was time for a fresh start."

"Well, welcome to your new life, eh?" He had noticed me listening in. "Hey, Ryder. Morning or afternoon?" He yawned. "I don't know."

"I don't know either. Just know its 2819. Want to take bets on what date it would be on Earth?" I responded.

"Hey now, it's too soon for that kind of thinking." The other man said. "Good to see you, though, Ryder." Then he yawned and I involuntarily copied. "Heh. Still waiting for my coffee."

"Seems like the Pathfinder team isn't getting any coffee." I replied to him.

"Oh damn, really? Shame." He shook his head.

"Has to do with figuring out what the hell happened earlier." I looked around.

"Strange, ain't it? I wonder what the noise was."

"Didn't you get the datapad? Some strange phenomenon." I pointed at the datapad on the previous bed.

"Oh, better go check that out, then."

"Yeah, see ya." The conversation turned silent and I had to go anyways.

"Bye, Ryder."

I was finally at the door to leave where I found Cora waiting for me. She asked if I was ready as soon as I opened the door. When the door had opened, many people came flying down to the left side of the room over by a conduit. Everyone had asked what was wrong, I looked over to the smoking conduit as it built up in sound. Then it emitted a minor popping sound followed by a fire. Sparks went flying everywhere and the ground shook, I caught myself from falling.  _ Shit. _

Cora and I ran over to the front of it. The large conduit over by and higher than the stairs was surrounded with smoke. A woman stood on top of it calling attention to herself. "Whatever hit the ark fried everything! We have to balance the power load, or it could explode!"

"We don't know where the fault is!" One of the technicians beside me responded. People were coughing from the smoke, and so was I.

Cora leaned over and whispered to me, "You have a scanner right? On your omni tool?" I nodded. "Ryder could help find it, she has a scanner!"

"On it!" I took out my omni tool on my left hand and opened the scanner. The orange glow turned to a small screen like an x-ray and a large horizontal grid light came out from the other side of the tool. Cora went to get readings on the second conduit. I saw an outline of an internal component and pressed the scan button on the screen.

SAM responded, "The phase coil is operating normally."

"It has to be here!" I moved the scanner up and found another component.

"There's no indication of a fault in the axial coupling." The omni tool itself provides general information of whatever I scan, but SAM will always provide more analysis and detail from the scans that I do.

Cora yelled across the room to keep looking. I moved over to the right and up a bit to the other side of the conduit. The scanner had read that there was no current present in the compensator relay. It was nonfunctional.

"Relay 2-C shows damage from a temperature spike." SAM analyzed.

"Found it! A bad relay!"

I looked around and all the room was busy frantically typing on consoles, trying to make sure things don't go more wrong. "Ryder!" A technician caught my attention. "Up the stairs, right next to the conduit, is a console. Can you reset the relay there? If I leave this console, the whole cryo bay could go dark!"

_ Oh shit. _ I didn't waste any time. I sped up the stairs and to the slight ledge to the console. When I got to the hologram of buttons and readings, aka the console, I took out my omni tool and connected the circular part from my palm to the circular port on the console, allowing SAM to make the necessary repairs to functionality through my device.

"There! It's reset!"

The alarms had turned off and the smoke cleared. People slowly stopped working at various consoles to calm down.

"Rerouting the current..." Various technicians spoke across the room.

"The grid's recovering!" One shouted up the stairs.

"It's working!" Said a technician in an uplifting tone.

"Readings are in the green!" He gave a thumbs up.

"Thank god. That could've been the end of everyone in the cryo bay." The woman next to me muttered.  _ Shit... that also means Scott... _

Cora complimented my efforts. "Now we can get to the tram."

"Tell the captain this won't hold for long." A man shouted as he crossed the room. "We're using duct tape and rubber bands here."

I focused my efforts in continuing forward. My mind couldn't stop thinking about Scott, and the further I traveled from him, the more I wanted to go back and sit with him through it all. The more things seemed to go wrong, the less I wanted to be here in Andromeda. There was no home. No place to curl up. No warm bed, or midnight calls to close friends. I mean, soon we will build a home, we just need to land on Habitat 7 first.  _ Is it wrong that I feel so skeptical about this? We woke up and ten minutes later the Hyperion hit something, then Scott's pod malfunctioned, then one of the conduits controlling the entire damn cryo bay practically explodes. Please, tell me this isn't something to regret. _

I was at the top of the stairs and opened the door. A small hallway bled before me. Red lights signing  _ alert _ painted the reflective grey and white ground and walls. A person was sitting up on the floor, another cared for them. Another person ran across the room to the console on the other side. Even such a small and empty space was frantically trying to fix itself. 

Cora scoffed. "That was close. Barely in Andromeda and we're already scrambling."

"The adventure has surely begun." I tried to smile. 

"Not sure your dad will see it that way." She whispered back. She had picked up a datapad tossed away on the floor. "What's this?"

"What does it say?"

"It's a general tracking log. And it doesn't look good." She handed it to me. "Take a look."

_ Automated logs _

Report run: 2819, identifier QPA-Z

_ **Year/event** _

_ (2185) Departure.procedures: confirmed _

(2185) Stasis.lockdown.engaged: confirmed

(2186) Anomalous.comm.sensor.readings: report logged

(2347) Trajectory.drift.detected: report logged

(2347) Trajectory.course.correction: confirmed

(2411) Arks Paarchero/Leusinia/Natanus: condition green

(2437) Sensor.array.fault.detected: report logged

(2437) Sensor.array.fault.repair: FAILED

(2819) Trajectory.destination: confirmed

(2819) Destination.location.proximity: confirmed

(2819) Stasis.revival.engaged: confirmed

(2819) Nexus/Arks Paarchero/Leusinia/Natanus: not detected

(2819) Sensor.faultAHOIE;*^IANE**&KFLAJOF*^^ KH

(2819) ERROR

"We should head to the bridge." I sat it back down on the floor.

"Agreed." Cora had opened the door that lead to the tram. Since the arks were so huge, trams were made for easier and faster travel across main areas. It's a small room with one main hologram console of a map and a few rows of seats facing the middle. I connected my omni tool to the console and the map popped up on my tiny screen, bold circles in rooms with the name of the room besides it. I pressed the one that said habitation. The tram took off slowly at first.

An uneasy feeling had settled in my core. Everything had felt wrong. Something was going to go horribly wrong. I couldn't shake it. It wasn't my fear for Scott, or whatever we hit, it was just something else.

"Are you alright, Ryder?"

"I can't be the only one, right? Everything just feels off and wrong."

"Well, we did have a rough start and are in a completely new galaxy. It could be that. But, I feel it, too." I sighed and looked down. "Hey, we gotta keep going, right?"

"We have to. Because if we don't, we are technically stuck in a worse situation. Just digging our graves." I watched my feet, when I lifted my toes, it made a slight bump in the shoe. It was some sense of familiarity.

The ride was silent except for the hum of the tram. It stopped at the end as slowly as it started. Cora and I got up and walked out, passing two doors and walked across the main habitation deck. It was more hectic in here than anywhere else. We dodged the runners and had gone up the stairs to the main door that lead to the bridge.

As soon as the door was opened, a man ran across our view yelling for helm control to report. The room was a barrage of flashing lights, scurrying people, and at the helm was my father and the captain looking out the observation window.

"We're drifting!" Another man ran past us.

"Flight controls aren't responding!"

_ This is bad... this is very bad. _

I had noticed a strange orange and grey web-like structure across the window that was outside of the ship. The orange glow of the structure pulsated, and the more I looked the more I realized how huge it really was. Millions if not more kilometers of this strange stuff surrounded us, but it wasn't moving, just pulsing, like some sort of trap.

"First priority is stopping these outages!" Captain Dunn ordered.

"Mainline power's been knocked out! We're on reserves, Captain! They won't last!"

This web... was all we could see against the blackness of space. Some energy pockets in the web made it look like dots. This seemed impossible to navigate through. _ This does not look good... _

"What's our position?" My dad walked across the room to stand up by Dunn.

"Unknown- we lost telemetry!" A pilot responded.

"SAM, we need eyes out there." His voice as commanding and monotone as always. Always painted a boring grey.

"Attempting to adjust sensor array." SAM said.

Dunn faced Dad. "Alec, please... you may be Pathfinder, but this is my ship." She retorted.

"Captain, the protocol's clear: in the absence of communication with the Nexus or the other arks, we proceed to our appointed golden world. Solid ground." He emphasized the last bit.

"If it's even out there! Nobody said anything about running into an energy cloud- and that's just a wild guess what we hit!" There was a moment of silence, two pulses emitted from the cloud, brightening up the room for a moment. "Alec, I need to assess the damage. Stop the bleeding. We've got 20,000 people asleep on this ship... Let's give them a chance to wake up."

Cora leaned over to whisper, "Can you blame her?"

_ It does seem safer. Right now, everyone that's asleep could die from a simple electrical malfunction. We're in the dark. _ "She's the captain. It does sound safer. And I'd think she gets the final word."

"Well, he might-"

Dad turned around, annoyance in his eyes and pointed at us. "This isn't about having the final word."

Cora straightened up, "Yes, sir."

Dad moved his eyes over to me, a hint of frustration hit me like a wave.

"We're coming through!" The pilot announced.

Everyone looked out the window. Pass the pulsating cloud lie the planet. "My god..." The captain sighed.

The planet had rings around it. When it was in full view, the web was gripping it like a hand. Where the web touched the planet, had black and red burn marks around it. Habitat 7 looked dead. My heart felt like it had dropped. The other side of the planet was untouched and looked landable, or seemed, as everything was covered by a thick layer of swirling clouds. I felt my face tense when I felt like crying. Nothing was going to plan.

"Is that our golden world?" Dunn continued.

"That's Habitat 7, 'New Earth' if we're lucky." Dad went up to the hologram console in front of the window to pull up a scan of the planet. "All of our long-range scans told us it was in the green zone. Perfect for human settlement."

"It doesn't even look the same." Cora countered.

"Well, we don't know exactly how bad it is yet. Still seems like the best shot for a new home." I tried to stay positive.

"Maybe." Dunn looked at me. "There's just a lot on the line."

"SAM?" Dad asked.

"The energy from the phenomenon is dampening our sensors. Planetary conditions are unknown."

Dad took a minute to think before concluding, "We're marooned. Twenty thousand souls adrift at sea. And when the power runs - and stays - out... We need to know if that's safe harbor."

"And if it's not?"

"As Pathfinder it will be my job to find an alternative. It's what we trained for. But if this goes well... we're already home."

"All right. Just make it quick."

"Harper, the rest of the team should be awake by now. Have them spin up two shuttles. Planetfall in thirty." 

"Yes, sir." Cora and my dad had left the bridge.

Dunn walked closer to me. "A stubborn one, isn't he?"

"Stubborn runs in the family, I guess. I might've rubbed off on him."

"Just as long as he knows what he's doing. It's not like the cavalry's coming to save the day." Dunn went back to her post. "I need an ETA on our sensor repairs. We're blind out here."

I took a moment to get lost in the view. The black and orange burns sang an ominous choir in my head. The white clouds seemed like a mask to the darkness beneath them, swirling to one center, like the eye of a hurricane. I moved my eyes away. I needed to get moving. 

The good thing about these clothes the Initiative gave us is that it's an okay underarmor. Not the best gear, but neither is the actual armor that they provided. I took the tram over to the shuttle bay.

I sat down in one of the seats, alone, listening to the sound of the tram. A zig-zag dark and light grey paint my mind in tempo of the hum. I had leaned over and rested my elbows on my legs, head dropped down. I let silent tears splash my bare hands. I was scared, anxious, lonely, and regretful. My hands shook and I had felt dizzy. I don't get sick or nauseous easily, but it translates into other feelings to tell me something. Last time I puked was over fifteen years ago, not counting the journey. I gained a phobia of it after having some of it trapped in my lungs when I was younger. Witnessing a trauma can be just as terrifying as being in it. Scott, on the other hand, he doesn't have the phobia.  _ Scott... _

_ What if I stayed in the Milky Way? What if I joined the military like my dad pressured me to? Instead of the science team that worked with the Alliance? I never want to. I don't want to kill. Defense is fine, but who said that I'd be good at a job like that? Or a job like this? What the hell was I thinking? What if I do something horrible and accidentally kill or allow someone to die? _ Tears fell faster. I made a face trying to keep it all silent, despite being in an empty room. Despite my mother always telling me that my sensitivity, empathy, sympathy, makes me a stronger person.  _ What if I disappoint Dad? _ That's when I made a sound. The emotional pain from the what-ifs had hit me. I then regretted every bad thought of dad, every bad word. I love him. I look up to him, and he teaches me a lot. I felt like a damn spoiled brat ever talking back to him.

The tram slowed down. That's when I dried my face. My skin gets flushed easily, but not without reason. Crying, even slightly, will cause my face to turn red. Drying my face never hides everything. I stood up and walked out of the tram into the locker room or armory. My locker was up by Scott's and Dad's. I saw Cora on the other side and three other men from earlier suiting up. I started with the armored pants, boots, chest and arm pieces, then the gloves. The hard parts of the armor aren't that resilient nor do they cover much. My waist, back of my thighs, most of my arms were exposed. Well, still covered by the under armor. I went across to the shelf to find the military grade omni tool. Cora came around looking for something as well.

"Scott's going to hate that he missed this." I muttered.

"Are all the Ryders adrenaline junkies?" She stood up.

"It's in our blood. You know, I was born a minute ahead of him." I smiled. "And I have never let him forget it."

Cora patted my shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll pull through."

I backed up. "He has to if he wants to hear the stories."

"So, let's give him one. Oh, and you'll want to find a helmet. And maybe stop at the good luck rock."

"Uh... what?"

"Old superstition of your dad's." She walked over by the door. "Oh and, don't forget to read the Pathfinder Team field manual on that crate over there." She pointed. "Just to brush up on protocol."

I picked up the datapad, short and sweet it read;

_ Introduction _

_ As a member of the Pathfinder Team, you play a critical role in the Andromeda Initiative's efforts to establish a foothold in the new galaxy. The team has many challenges: _

_ -Golden world site verification _

- _ Reconnaissance and mapping of unknown territories (planetary and celestial) _

_ -Scientific analysis and discovery of new phenomenon  _

_ -Potential first contact with extraterrestrials  _

_ -Establishing diplomatic relations with local inhabitants  _

_ -General support of settlement outposts _

I looked over at the other two lockers. Scott's was on the end, and Dad's next to his. Scott's locker remains untouched and full. "Get better, Scott. We are all going to need you. It's time for you to actually head out and experience something." I smiled. Scott was stationed at a mass relay his entire time in the military. He wanted to explore so badly but couldn't because of his position. Then Dad's career went south and he was given a dishonorable discharge for creating SAM. AI being highly illegal in the Milky Way. Scott got discharged, and the science team didn’t trust me. No one trusted us, so we left. What's the point in staying if you're not going to get anywhere? Or, the fact no one trusted us with their lives. Scott and I were only working for about a year and a half. I got to go on some expeditions and was able to work with a peacekeeping force. Was I any good? Hell no. Thankfully, there wasn't much action, and I was only in a couple of fights. Pirates had a thing for kidnapping engineers and scientists. I was never in charge, they put me in a glorified security position, because I knew how to deal major damage with my omni-tool and tech, and I still hesitated. Thankfully, joining the Initiative placed all higher ranks, like Scott and I, into survival training.

Then I looked over at Dad's locker.  _ He's already suited up. Obviously. Why did you put me on the Pathfinder Team? It makes no sense logically. I have almost zero experience, I am young, weak, small, emotional as all hell. Why me? Is it because I'm your daughter and you wanted me to come along? Dad, you're making a horrible decision. Please, don't let me hold you back... _

I backed away from the lockers. I walked around to the out of place rock up against the back wall. It was huge and there was a light shining on it. I made a face when I scanned it.

SAM provided an analysis, "Alkali feldspar and quartz. Commonly known as granite."

"A good luck rock? Granite, huh?" I pursed my lips.

"Your dad was mountain climbing back on Earth. It caught him from falling." Cora responded.

"Wait, the rock caught him from falling, so he took it?" I looked over at her with concern.

"Yeah, not sure how he got it out." She shrugged

"What if someone else falls and there's no rock to catch them?"

"Well, he's a bit superstitious. Even has lucky socks.” She chuckled.

"Socks aren't going to kill somebody if they're missing." I had to point that part out. 

"What's done is done, Ryder. And with the way things are going today, we need any luck we can get."

"Wonder why I never knew about this. How long ago was it?" I was jealous a woman that I never even knew existed before the Initiative knows more about my own father than I do.

"A few years before launch. I don't know exactly when."

I frowned. "Alright." I had turned around to see the other side of the locker bay area, three other men hanging around. Two were by a small radio playing some tunes, and the other was checking out his gear by his locker. He looked at me and nodded. "Ryder. Fisher."

"Hey Fisher, how're things?"

"Eh, just making sure my armor is good. Can never be too sure."

"Ah."

"I uh, heard a rumor that your dad and the captain aren't seeing eye-to-eye on this."

I shrugged. "Dunn wasn't thrilled with the idea for the expedition. My dad persuaded her, as you can see."

"I also heard that you weren't a big fan of it, either."

"Well, this is her ship. I think it's her call."

He chuckled. "You got guts going against the old man. But we are the Pathfinder team, and the team should answer to the Pathfinder. At least that's how I see it. And bonus to your dad for being an N7. He's got the best aim. I'd go wherever he goes."

_ Yeah, but he still chose me to be on the team, so his logic must've died. _ "See you on the shuttle, Fisher."

"See ya."

I walked over to the music. It set the tempo for how fast I went, and painted an endless scene in my head. It was techno styled and I felt like nodding my head to it. I might've done that without realizing it.

"Hey, Ryder." The man talking to Greer said.

"Hey, uh..?"

"Kirkland." He scoffed. "We talked a little before launch, or you did at least. Not sure if you know Greer."

Greer waved. "Hey. Your dad say anything about what's going on?"

I shook my head slightly. "He was all business. Prep and ready to go. Those might've been his exact words."

"Short and sweet? Alright, will do."

"I gotta go get my helmet. See you guys on the shuttle." They continued their conversation when I walked past them.

My helmet was on a shelf up by the wall. It had my name on it. I picked it up and checked the fit. I heard the air seal work with my armor. Everything checked out okay when I took it off. I just held it in my hand, I'd put it on before the shuttle launched. "Got it."

"The Pathfinder is now requiring sidearms. I've opened the armaments locker."

My heart dropped. "Are we uh, expecting trouble, SAM?"

"A precaution. Please arm yourself, Ryder."

_ It's just to be safe. It doesn't mean there's going to be any fighting. Just like we wear helmets in case the air isn't breathable or things go south. It's just to be safe. _ I had approached the weapons locker on the other side of the room, thankfully this room is small because I've been all over. There was another field manual covering a different topic. It was by a couple of pistols;

_ **First Contact Protocol** _

_ In the event any member of the Pathfinder Team encounters intelligent alien life, it is imperative that 'first contact' protocols be strictly observed. The Andromeda Initiative holds the principle of peace and cooperation among our highest Ideals. Aggressive action against extraterrestrials is only permitted when hostile intent is clearly demonstrated and Pathfinder team members are at obvious risk of injury or death. _

I had to keep telling myself it was just precautions. "Better safe than sorry." I picked up my pistol. It was a cheaper kind of pistol, but it's what we had.

Cora was waiting by the shuttle bay doors. We walked out together. Short hallway, then the shuttle bay, which was huge.

Cora chuckled. "So, just another boring day at the office, huh?"

"Oh you know, just setting foot on planets no human has ever set foot on. The usual. I can't wait."

"I know what you mean. I always wondered what it was like when old Earth explorers crossed the ocean. Only the guide of stars and dead reckoning with them."

"And a map with a little caption off to the side that said, 'Here be dragons.'"

"Well they made it. And maybe we'll finally get to see a dragon."

"Oh man, I hope so."

"I hope we don't get eaten if we do. You ready?"

"As ready as I can be." We walked further into the room. 

We saw Carlyle packing supplies into a crate, but he was also in full armor. "Doctor Carlyle, with everything going on, I'd think the ark needs you more than we do?" Cora stopped with her arms crossed.

He closed the lid and stood up. "Pathfinder wants a medic on hand. And if that's home down there, I'm happy to knock on its door."

I smiled. "I hope so, too. You got a quote ready? 'One small step...'"

He picked up the crate. "I think your dad will be handling that honor." 

Dad had come out of one of the shuttles to make a speech. "All right, team, button up. We leave in five."

Cora stepped forward. "Sir, we broke out the weapons as per request. Anything we should know?"

"Seemed prudent, given the situation. We'll be down a man with Scott out."

I looked away in a frown. Dad had approached me causing me to look back up. 

"I heard what happened. Your brother's strong. He'll make it."

"He wouldn't want us to worry because of him." As much negativity as I had with my dad, I still looked up to him. I listened to everything he's told me. Everyday when I was little, I would send him emails because I missed him so much. When he got the chance he would respond. Mom even caught me sleeping in his N7 jacket one night because I had a nightmare. He had taught me a few golden rules: 

Mission needs to take priority for the safety of the people.

Always try to save as many people as possible, even if it's just one.

Honesty and truth will always help long term efforts while lying and cover ups will always hurt long term efforts. 

There are exceptions to every rule, use your best judgement.

Dad nodded. "You're right. The mission comes first. Though I doubt your mother would've seen it that way. I promised her I'd get you two here safely." He gave a grin and walked back up into the shuttle as a platform. "Okay team, listen up. I chose each of you for the Pathfinder team, not just because you're talented and passionate. But because you're dreamers, like me. We dream of exploring the unknown, of finding the edge of the map- and then discovering what lies beyond. When people look back on this- and they will- they'll remember that we didn't give up. We kept dreaming. That our first few faltering steps in Andromeda were the beginning of everything they know. We only get one chance to be first. So, let's go make history." 

His speeches always inspired me. Cora walked onto his shuttle with him and Mr. Floaty lightly punched me in the arm. "I've been waiting 600 years for this." It took me a minute to follow Mr. Floaty to the second shuttle. I was still in awe.

We had put our helmets on when the shuttles launched out. Dunn wishing all of us good luck. Outside of the ship, the pulsing web of energy was practically everywhere, but we had a straight shot to Habitat 7. Fisher was the pilot for my shuttle. Mr. Floaty and I stared out the window. The ark looked like it was tangled in that mess. There was comm chatter between the shuttles up front that I wasn't paying attention to.

"Woah, will you look at that?" Mr. Floaty said. _ I should really get his name. _

"Whatever it is, it caused the Hyperion to get stuck."

"It appears to be an unstable mass of dark energy." SAM analyzed.

"If you say so." He responded.

Dad warned us to stay clear of it.  _ No shit. _ The shuttle bounced as we went through some of the mass we couldn't avoid, and then switched to cruising speed. The sound of the engines and light push from the sudden change in speeds was familiar.

"Ryder. We didn't have a chance to meet back in the Milky Way. Name's Liam Kosta, security and response specialist."

"Good to meet you, Liam."

"Hard to believe we're finally doing this."

"Yeah. Nerve wracking, but living the dream."

We began our deceleration to the planet. The shuttle glowed a fiery red and orange, which meant there was still an atmosphere, that's good. 

"Here we go..." He said.

It felt like a bumpy session of unwrapping a gift. There was some trouble entering the atmosphere but we made it through.

When the orange cleared... It all looked dead. The sky was grey and white, only mountains without green to them. Fear struck my eyes. It was a nightmare.

"Holy..." Liam was taken aback.

"Shuttle two, are you seeing this?" Cora asked.

"Copy that." I answered. "Looks like hell." 

Ionization levels were rising, oxygen below human requirements. It's like the world was shat on. And then,

Liam dropped his arms. "Uh...the mountains are floating." There were pieces of rocks and mountains just floating in the air by the shuttle. They looked like giant arrowheads and spearheads, all sharp, ridged, and jagged. 

_ Oh no... no, no, no... This can't be right. How? _ My heart rate increased.

"Look! Port side!"

A large structure, in the shape of a boomerang with half of it underground, and other buildings like it but smaller lay before us. It was a ways away, but, that was advanced engineering. Aliens. "Has anyone seen us?" I ask.

Liam looked at me. "What if they're not friendly?" 

Dad answered by quoting part of the field manual.

Something was wrong. The shuttle started shaking and turning, the engines strained. A flash of bright light and Liam and I lost our balance. Alarms and warnings went off on the shuttle. We were on fire. Everything started sparking and there was electrical pops and small explosions. Another lightning strike hit us. Liam and I fell to the port side window. We were going down. I felt like screaming but held it in.

The window came off. Liam got sucked outside but he was barely holding on to the side of the shuttle. "Whoa!"

I tried to reach over to grab him, but couldn't. "Liam!"

"Ryder!"

We hit a floating rock. Causing the shuttle to explode and send Liam and I flying out the window. Liam was further from me but we were both screaming. Parts of the shuttle came falling with me. I felt the heat from fiery parts pass and nick my armor. Liam was out of sight. I screamed and flailed. I could feel my whole body shaking and I was surprised I didn't pass out from terror. I almost did. I was falling straight through a section of floating rocks, frantically trying to miss them and get my jump-jet working. My body was spinning in the air as I tried to go feet first.

"Acceleration increasing." SAM warned.

"No shit!"

"Your jump-jet is malfunctioning."

"Please, SAM! Get it working!"

"Approaching terminal velocity."

I saw the top of the mountain I was approaching. "SAM!"  _ Here's where I die... _

I closed my eyes to prepare, when I felt my jump-jet power on. I still hit the top of the mountain with a lot of force that I felt throughout my body. I rolled down the side, passing over bumps and small cliffs and dead plants. I finally hit the ground with my face and heard a crack from my helmet. I rolled over onto my side, ignoring the searing pain, and saw a large crack across my helmet, leaking air. The air I was breathing wasn't breathable. "Shit!" I pulled out my omni-tool and opened a mini-facturing repair protocol, and a scanner like beam emitted from the tool and I positioned it over my helmet, allowing it to seal the crack and the internal air was stabilized.

I lay there, breathing fast and hard with dry swallows, trying to get the dizziness to pass. My entire body was in pain, I could feel a headache forming, and I was sure I at least bruised half of the bones in my body. I rolled over and shakily stood up. Trembling at my feet, I held my side as I struggled to stand up straight. I was on a large cliff overlooking a dead planet. It was foggy, I was in almost unbearable pain, everything looked dead and the plants that somehow survived looked malformed and dying, huge lightning strikes struck everywhere from cloud to ground. It was all grey and hazy. It looked like a nightmare.

_ This has to be a nightmare, this has to be! Oh fuck...please just be a nightmare...please! _ I fell to my knees.

"This...this isn't a nightmare."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I have said before, all rights belong to BioWare.
> 
> *You may be wondering if the chapter can be skipped, then why did I put it in? Simple answer, my mother and friends are interested in my fanfic but cannot play the game themselves


	3. Habitat 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara crash-lands on Habitat 7. The place is less like a golden world and more resembling one's nightmares. Sara needs to regroup with the rest of the team, who are spread out over the planet, and get the hell out. It seems that everything that could go wrong, does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** I had to rewrite a few things in the first two chapters to help make sense story-wise. Sara was part of a science team that worked closely with the Alliance often, but she herself was not military. She also took a violin to Andromeda rather than a saxophone. (Just a synopsis so you guys don't have to reread :3 )

With total disbelief in my heart, I stared blankly out into the horizon. It was all mind-numbing. A ringing struck in my ears like a warning siren telling me to get out. With each flash of lightning an overwhelming feeling of horrifying regret poured into my veins. I feel the tears form...

_ What happened to everyone? _

_ What happened to Dad? _

I stood back up as quickly as my body could allow, clenching at my side with my left arm, I raise my right arm and turn on the omni-tool, "This is recon specialist Ryder. Come in." The omni-tool was just static, and a bit damaged. My heart dropped...  _ Is he...? No, no, no... I can't think about this right now. _ "Pathfinder? Hyperion? SAM? Anyone?!"

I hear rushing footsteps behind me. Adrenaline pumps as I quickly turn my head and go for my gun, stopping when I see Initiative colors.

"Save your breath, Ryder. SAM's offline and the comm link's trashed." Liam said, grabbing at his knees when he stopped running. He looked up, "I'm surprised we aren't, too."

I lean down, "Did anyone else make it?"

He shook his head and straightened up. "I... I don't know. It was all a blur. Happened so fast. Shuttle split in two... this is more than a nightmare."

I stare back out into the horizon again, eyes tired and warm. "Because this is real... and... this isn't home."

An eternity passed of blank thinking. Just listening to my tired breaths and heart pound against my chest. My eyes droop downwards at the ground. The dry, rocky soil beneath me looked more like upgraded sand.  _ I'm not trained for this... Hell, I was only trained for survival during orientation to be a part of the Pathfinder team. Dad was disappointed that I didn’t get a head start by joining the military years prior. _

"I think... Ryder." I make a noise to let him know I was listening. "I think we need to find higher ground. Get a better view and find out if anyone else is alive." He taps my shoulder which causes me to jump. "Come on."

_ What... the actual hell? _ I started to tremble. Each strike of lightning caused a sour, cringing note across my mind, blurring out my thoughts. Everything seemed grey and foggy, the melody of this place was more of high pitched shrieking in my mind. I felt dizzy. "Liam... what are we going to do exactly?" I looked over my shoulder.

"Well... how's your survival training?" He asked.

I had let out a nervous laugh.  _ Shit... _ "Very basic. Nothing this crazy."

"Well, crazy just found us. Those rocks out there are floating." He raised his arm towards the sky frantically.

I walked more towards the edge of the cliff. The horizon was bleak, everything had sharp pointed edges and dark colors. The sky was mockingly bright, cloudy, but no rain. Everything looked dead against the fog. "Why are they floating?"

"No idea. I'm not a scientist." Liam reminded me.

"Well... why aren't these rocks here floating?" I kicked a medium-sized boulder.

"Again, Ryder. No idea." He tried to bring up his omni-tool. "Gah, it's completely broken!"

"Maybe a change in density? Either in the atmosphere or the boulders themselves? Maybe, they're hollow?" I ignored him.

"Sure as hell didn't feel hollow when I landed on them. Can we focus on this later?" He begged.

"Uh... yeah." I loomed over the edge of the cliff. The feeling of someone trying to push me over the edge washed over. My stomach formed a pit at the thought. My breathing had increased and I wanted to cry. I stumble back away from the cliff.

"Hey..." Liam's voice brought me back to reality. "Good news is, some of these look like plants. A few look like weird tentacles. Is the water here even water?"

"I'd be surprised if there was any." I took out my omni-tool to open the scanner. "Let's see what we can find out without SAM." I analysed the tentacle plant. It was weirdly small and yellow... and coming out of a rock.

Liam walked up beside me. "What's it say?"

I read directly from the scanner, "67% probability of plant life. Photosynthetically inefficient. Oh... it's possibly carnivorous. And finally there's high variance in cellular mutation."

"Carnivorous? Damn, let's not touch it then." He let out a nervous chuckle.

"Seems like everything's out to kill us." My voice cracked.

"We also saw that alien structure up ahead, right? Maybe they know what's going on." He pointed in the direction of where we saw the structure.

I had turned my head to glare at him. "If they're still here! Look at this place! It's dead!"

"We don't know that, Ryder. Keep your cool. We have to figure this out." He said sternly.

I took a couple of breaths before I returned to my scanner. "Without SAM, it's hard to say what exactly this plant is. Without SAM, it's going to be hard to figure out anything here. It's kinda a plant, kinda dead, and kinda not all at the same time. Never seen anything like it." I put away my scanner.

"Those structures we saw on the way in... they seemed to be working... who could survive here?" He asked.

"Not sure we want to find out. If they can survive here, they probably don't need or want us here." Just saying that out loud made my heart race.

"What do you mean?" Through his helmet I could see him furrow his brows.

"Liam," I turned completely to face him, "we just got here. We don't have anything to offer except our very lives. Right now, any alien would probably see us as a parasite."

"Or, maybe they're understanding. Gotta keep all options open, Ryder. Can't be one-sided all the time." His optimism sounded almost condescending at this point.

"Ugh. I can't help it!" My heart pounded against my chest. "We're stranded here! My father could be dead! Oh... he could be dead..." The lump formed in my throat.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. "Hey, I know it's going to be hard. But alive or not, your father would want you to be strong and get out to safety. Besides, he's an N7 with the best gear available. If our shitty armor survived this fall, I have no doubt your father did as well."

I couldn't help releasing a tear or two.  _ My emotional control is shit... _

"Hey, it's okay to cry. But we have to stay focused. Crying is natural, but again, we have to work together to get out of here. I say we start looking around for clues or resources." Liam tried to reassure me.

_ Right... I'm just sensitive. I cry watching almost every movie out there, or just the cuteness of an animal. But since I cry so damn much... it probably doesn't mean anything anymore does it? _ "Sorry... yeah, let's... do that." I’m used to my own harshness, even though I would never say it to another person, because ironically, I know what I say to myself isn’t true.

There was a minute or two of silence, except for the sky screaming behind us, as we looked around the dead plants and dry ground.

"Storms here don't seem natural." He said.  _ I don’t think he likes to be silent… ugh. _

"You think, Liam?" My sarcasm slipped.

"Sometimes you can miss the obvious." He tried to match my tone.

"I think it's pretty hard to miss this. Considering it slapped us in the face." My tone was a bit harsher than I wanted it to be.

"Never know." He shrugged.

"Hmm..." I hummed.

"What?" He looked back and forth.

"Maybe... by classification this isn't a storm?" I was thinking out loud at this point.

"I don't know. I can't answer that. All I know is, there's lightning. Enough for me to call it a storm." He concluded.

"It's good to know the cause." I muttered.

"To fix it? We have to get out of here first and make sure we're safe." Liam turned around, I look over his shoulder. "Hey! Look!"

"Something's broken..." We jogged over to the debris.

"Can you scan for anything?" He asked, quickly.

I took out my scanner. "It was our supplies on the shuttle... completely destroyed. Damaged in the crash. No good to us now." My body felt tense and restricted.

"Goddamnit!" Liam took a breath. "We need to move forward. Pass this overhang."

"It's the only way to go." _ Well, when you reach rock bottom, the only way you can go is up. I hope this is rock bottom. _

As we approached the mouth of the overhang, a medium sized box sparked at me. I jolted back. "Ahg! What the hell?"

He sighed. "That's our comm device."

I scanned it at a safe distance.  _ Standard edition comms? Really? You go to a completely new galaxy and risk your lives only to be handed shitty armor and weapons and plain standard equipment? This wasn't thought through all the way, was it? _ "Completely broken. No fixing this. Unless you have spare wires and tech."

"I have a broken omni-tool. But I don't think the small wrist band will fix that." He sighs. "This explains why we lost the SAM connection."

"Well, we're on our own, then." I took a minute to observe the mouth of the overhang. I throw up my arms. "There's supply boxes everywhere! All broken. Just our luck."  _ Or mine. I feel like bad luck. _

"Hey! Look!" He rushed over to the rock creating the overhang. "Mushrooms!"

"Fungi! Decomposition!"  _ Hope. _ They were kinda small, but bigger than the regular mushrooms on Earth. These had a slight bluish glow to them. A little smile escaped my lips.

"C'mon, I think we've wasted enough time here." He started walking through the overhang.

"Oh... by the way. Don't breathe the air. Found that out the hard way." I mentioned.

"Got... it..." He stopped.

"What?" I turned to see what he was looking at. "Oh..."

A giant glowing mushroom, taller than me, and had little jellyfish-like tentacles hanging off the cap. The chords in my head chimed when I saw the light blue of the 'shroom, a melody of hope playing in the background of a foreboding suspension.

We walked up to it. The scanner read;  _ multicellular fungal lifeform. Bioluminescence enzyme detected. High variance in cellular mutation. _ "Bioluminescence." I mumbled.

"That's cool. High tech biology." He looked at me.

"Well, it had to adapt to... eh. Never mind. Scanner said it was highly mutated, not evolved." I shrugged and pursed my lips. Though mutation and evolution happen at the same time, but the scanner did put emphasis on the mutated part.

"Doesn't mutation happen in a really short time?" His question seemed a bit off.

"It can, yes." I nodded.

"Do you think this just sort of appeared?" The worry broke through his words.

"I don't know. But, we're exposing ourselves to it." We walked through to the other side.

"Shit." He said under his breath.

I saw bits of our shuttle on a rock on fire. Low chords rumbled my thoughts. A minor key. It was a roaring fire, even at this distance, I felt the heat. I had to look past it and move on.

More bits of our shuttle and on fire, were up ahead on the edge of the cliff. Everything seemed so scattered. It looked like a background for a stage featuring chaos.

"You think that energy cloud could've caused all of this?" Liam broke the silence.

"SAM said it's dark energy, but that's in space." I gasped out, my brows felt sore from the furrowing.

"Yeah. Hell of a cloud." He sighed.

"But it seemed like the energy cloud was pretty close to the atmosphere. Too close. Close enough to make boulders float." Not only that, but it was dark energy. Element zero, or eezo, is pretty damn close to being the elemental version of dark energy. Eezo can cause organics to have biotics, which allows one to practically harness dark energy, cause things to levitate, bring items to someone without moving, throw a person off a cliff, even create a mini black hole for a bit if one's biotics are strong enough.  _ I know the extent of it. The effects it can have on something, or someone. The things it can add...  _ I look down,  _ or take away. _

"Makes you a bit uneasy, yeah?" He questioned.

_ Anxious...  _ It was like the beginning of a panic attack but in slow motion. I tried so hard to not let it happen because it wasn't the time. A pit slowly grew in my stomach as I experienced what seemed to be a losing battle. My heart beat against my ears, and I felt it against my ribs and the vibration that ensued afterwards. But, those were just my beginning physical symptoms. Next, would come the shaking and rapid breathing followed by involuntary crying. Worst of all, what happens mentally is like a little voice inside my head banging on my thoughts with a negativity stick. Emotionally abusing myself, and when the panic was over, feeling embarrassed and ashamed at self pity. But there was more, always more. It never stopped there, some of the worst words and phrases entered, telling me I can't, and the overwhelming feeling to scream and run away like a hard flight instinct.  _ I need to get out of here... I... need... _

"You alright, Ryder?" Liam caught my attention. 

I snapped out of it. I noticed the increase in trembling and my slow movements. "No... but too bad, right?" I was a bit monotone.

"Fight through it. Whatever you're thinking. You got this, and we need to survive." He spoke through my irrationality.

I appreciated the thought and kindness he was trying to give but... it didn't help.  _ You're selfish, Sara. Even when faced close with death you disappoint those around you. _ My cheeks started to burn, followed by pressure in the back of my eyes and the harsh lump in my throat.  _ Focus... just... focus... _

I gave Liam a smile,  _ not that he could see it through the breather, _ and then continued on. The cliff side continued around the mountain in a curve. The more we went, the more pieces of the shuttle we found on fire. One thing I did notice is the terrain became softer.  _ We're still on a rock... the hell? _ Dirt and dried up grass covered the ground in front of me.

"Shh, Ryder." Liam grabbed me. "Hear that?"

I listened carefully. Whatever it was, it sounded like the constant crackle of electricity. "Is that... lightning?"

"Blown up generator, maybe?" He tried to sound optimistic.

"Liam, there's nothing here." I raised my voice.

"Nothing here, maybe. But maybe up ahead?" He put emphasis on his ‘maybe’s.

We continued forward. Blue flashes poured down from the sky to the ground. One right after the other. The sound didn't sound like regular lightning, not like a crack, but like a loud zap. Still, this close to the chain of them was almost deafening. 

"Uh... what the hell is this?" Liam shouted.

There's no other way around. I shook my head. "Come on, we gotta get through it!"

"Wait, what?" He sounded dumbfounded.

"Liam, look around you! This is the only way forward!" I retorted.

I started my sprint, and saw a small cave up ahead. Something was off about the lightning, the ground would spark first and rise towards the sky, sometimes carrying tiny rocks with it making a web of electricity. Then, the zap from the sky.

"This is crazy!" Liam followed.

I slightly had my head turned to respond, "Welcome to Habitat 7! Oof-" A larger rock that was rising from the ground whacked me in the chest when I ran at it. I stumbled forward feeling the lick of electricity I had just ran across, Liam ran up and grabbed my arm to keep me from falling all the way and pulled me.

"Watch it, Ryder!" He yelled through gritted teeth.

Then, the zap happened. Our shields had taken damage from the proximity. "Shit!" I yelled. We haphazardly ran again, temporarily blinded by incoming flashes, the deafening sound... it felt horrible. I felt silenced. Emotionally numb. At the same time, a fuel burned inside that kept my legs moving while time stopped everywhere else. "We gotta keep moving!" I yelled as I ducked under another flying rock. Ringing and biological sirens stung my ears.

Liam screamed in pain. I kept running but looked behind me and he was still there. When I turned to face the front, I got zapped. It was enough to break my shields, and felt like millions of tiny needles just stung straight to my nerves. I was temporarily blinded and deafened by it, the only thing was the screeching siren in my head. "Damn it! Agh! Liam! In the cave! Looks safer!"

Liam grabbed me from the ground, we were at the mouth of the cave and hobbled inside with me. "Is this for real?" He panted. We were safe in the cave. As my vision returned, there was a slight glow from the mushrooms. Liam sat me down near the cave wall. "What the hell is going on in this place? Look, more of our shuttle parts in here, too!"

I felt dizzy, as my vision returned I saw some soot on my armor. "Planet's trying to kill us." The beeping sound of low shields slowly went away when they returned to full.

"Yeah well, it can try." He looked down at me. "Think you can stand back up?"

"Yeah... just a sec. Vision's blurry."  _ And I'm dizzy, but not the point. _ My body felt a bit tense from the shock, thankfully my shields absorbed most of it. When the shields break, it makes a glass-shattering sound, but I didn't hear it through the zap and ringing in my ears.

"Alright, well, I'm going to scout on ahead. I'll be back." With that, Liam went further into the cave.

I could hear the lightning continue to echo throughout the cave. The walls vibrated with each chain strike. My body felt tense and sore, like the day after an intense workout.  _ Can’t stretch in armor. Not like I would call this armor, it’s mostly just the under-armor fabric with a few hard spots. My waist is completely open! Along with most of my upper torso… the ballistic fabric is better than nothing I suppose… _

I looked around more intently. It wasn’t a dark cave, more like a longer overhang like before. Glowing mushrooms, huge and small, ran along where the rock met the ground. Like a tiny village, and each giant glowing mushroom was the town hall. The cave was dry and felt… stale.  _ Damn, just sitting here, I could take a nap. _ Even though I was surrounded by hard and dangerous surfaces, just sitting down up against something hooded my eyes.  _ You never realize how tired you really are until you rest, heh.  _ I let out a little scoff.

_ I have to get up, though. _ I groaned at the thought. My body struggled and pleaded every move I tried to make. My muscles shook as I stood up. I let out a slight gasp and fell back against the wall. It was almost as if my body gave up on pain but it replaced it with dull throbbing and inability.

I heard Liam’s footsteps as he returned. “Ryder, hey, good you’re doing better. On the other side there’s an opening. C’mon.”

I followed him through, being careful of the random ledge within the cave. The brightness of the sun at the end scolded my eyes.  _ At least the passageway was a lot shorter than I had imagined. _

“How’s your gun? Might want to see if it’s working.” He broke the silence.

“Huh?” I stopped.

“Your gun. There’s a busted fuel cell up ahead, past the fire, by the ledge. It’s a good way to see if your gun is working properly.” He recommended.

I took out the small pistol. The fuel cell he was talking about was barely hanging off the edge of the cliff, and sparking. I walked a little closer and took my time to aim.  _ I don’t want to waste any shots… this is a test.  _ I noticed my hands were a bit shaky, too.

I pulled the trigger. A light recoil followed that I wasn’t entirely ready for.  _ Damnit! _ The fuel cell was hit and it exploded off the ledge. I could hear the shrapnel clink down the mountain.

“I think it’s working.” I made sure the clip was full afterwards before putting it away.

“You took a while to aim there, Ryder.” He scoffed.

“I didn’t want to miss. Or take chances doing so.” I made up an excuse. Hopefully it worked.

“Oh, if you were worried about that. I did find some supplies up ahead, extra ammo from the shuttles. Near the ledge so be careful.” He tells me.

“Could’ve told me.” I still would’ve taken my time to aim.

“Hope you don’t take that long if we need to fight,” Liam said.

“Hope we don’t need to fight.” I almost stuttered. I know I’m not much of a fighter, and I hate drawing blood.  _ Every life is irreplaceable, priceless, one of a kind... _

“Can’t rely on hope in that situation, Ryder.” Liam broke my thought process.

I just let out a soft sigh in response. I didn’t really want to talk much, but it kept me from overthinking the situation. 

There was only one way to go, and that was to follow the ledge around the mountain, still. Something over the edge in the air caught my eye. I stopped and Liam almost ran into me. 

“What is it?” He frantically looked around.

“In the sky, Liam… something is flying.” The sun was blinding but I could see a group of creatures. Huge, and from what I could see, they had wings, about five or four pairs, and flew in the sky like how a manta ray swims. They let out an echoed noise, similar to a bird, a large bird. They had long tails, too. Ones that looked like they ended in an arrowhead.

“Oh, wow.” I couldn’t see it but I could tell his jaw was on the floor.

“Heh… ‘Here be dragons.’ Cora will love it.” The songs the creatures seemed to sing… it calmed my heart.  _ They live here. Completely and utterly live here. _ The smile my breather mask was hiding brought tears to my eyes. Their song made the sky look bluer than before, and the dry grass seemed greener. I wanted to listen to them sing some more, but we had to continue on to find the rest of the crew.

We heard more lightning strikes that came from up ahead. The path would narrow and expand as we walked it. The path lead us into a crevasse of the mountain, lightning striking past the ledge. 

“There! We should go up that cliff, we can find high ground.” Liam pointed up.

He was right. Within the crevasse, was a way up the mountain through series of ledges and cliffs. He nudged me and got ahead.

“Liam, are you sure about this?” My voice sounded panicked, which wasn’t a lie of how I felt.

“Why not? C’mon!” He almost seemed too excited.

“Not entirely sure we want to be the tallest thing around here. I already got struck once.” I reminded him.

He reached a small ledge and looked up and around. “I think I can see a path up. We’ll use the jump-jets if we have to.”

_ Right… the thing I haven’t exactly mastered yet. _ “Lovely.” I vaulted over on top of the ledge, Liam followed.

“I think I’d rather fall than get hit by lightning.” He concluded.

“Ha! Given our luck, could probably accomplish both.” After walking forward a bit, I noticed a small cave to our left, and a low hum. “Do you hear that?”

“Sounds like a bubbly hum.” He had lazily said ‘bubbly’ to make it more playful.

“What?” I just looked at him.

“Ya’know? Like a piece of tech’s version of someone’s voice sounding like they gargled gravel.” He explained as if I was insane for not knowing what he meant.

“Okay, never mind that. We should see if it leads anywhere.” I shook my head.

“We need to go up.” He reminded me.

“We need to find the others. If this is a safer route somewhere…” I used my head to point towards the entrance.

‘‘Alright, Recon Specialist. Lead the way.” He finally gave in.

I rolled my eyes and went into the cave. It was much smaller, and the ground was almost fully covered by the glowing mushrooms. “More of them.”

“Are they making that noise?” He stuck close to me, nervous.

I looked forward and saw a glow in the dead end. “No. We passed these before. It’s coming from inside the mountain.”

I approached the dull orange glow, I could tell it was some sort of tech, like two small broken power conduits. There was metal keeping it in place. I pulled out my scanner and all it could tell me without SAM was that the tech was high in energy. “It’s detecting a lot of energy. Like a lot.”

“What is it?” I could feel him looking over my shoulder.

I put my scanner away and looked up at it. “Don’t know, but it’s powerful. And potentially dangerous.”

“We shouldn’t be in here then. Back on the trail?” He spoke quickly.

“Yeah… trail.”  _ This planet is all kinds of weird. Everything seems dead but… the animals in the sky? Weird alien tech? Well, okay, we’re the aliens here-ugh- Sara, stay on task! _ Liam was already working on going up the next ledge when I left the cave. “Wait up!”

“Don’t worry, Ryder. I’m not going to leave you behind.” He called back to me.

I had to do a basic pull up to get over the ledge. It took a bit of work due to tense and sore muscles.  _ A massage would feel so wonderful right now. Actually, getting this armor off would be… even better? Find the crew and my dad and get the hell off this… hell. _

The next ledge required the jump jet to get over.

“How’d my dad find you?” Some of the air got pushed out of me when I climbed up after the jump.

“I was a cop.” He flew up the ledge to meet up with me. “Then crisis response.”

“How’d he find  _ you _ , though?” I asked for clarification.

“Tell you over a beer sometime.” We walked through the path, the glowing mushrooms and tentacle plants dotted on the trail.

“Hah. Oh boy.”  _ Not much of a drinker. _

“What?” He sounded winded.

“Beer isn’t exactly my go to drink.” I let out a nervous chuckle at the end.

“Oh. Heh. What is then?” He had a harsh but curious tone in his voice.

“I don’t really drink much, actually.” I could feel the judgment. “Never really had time or got into it.”

“Oh well, when this shit-fest is over, we should find a bar. Let you try out a few things. Know your limit?” He patted my back as we slowed down our walking.

I stopped in my tracks. “Would it surprise you if I said no?”

“Damn. Okay. Then we should probably take it easy.” It sounded like he was holding back a laugh as a snort escaped.

“I’m just surprised we’re talking about drinks when we can’t even breathe the air surrounding us.” I made sure to sound unamused.

“Distraction. Speaking of which, we should continue on. Not know how to walk and talk, Ryder?” His tone got perky.

The lightning got louder, so did the pit in my stomach. “My legs aren’t complaining.”

“Our oxygen levels will be sooner or later.” He nudged me on.

We continued onward, following the sound of the lightning. We were in a weird spot, a formation I’ve never seen before, it was like we were inside the mouth of a gaping cave. Liam and I were inside the mountain, but at the same time we weren’t. Up ahead the path looked as though it had collapsed into a small cavern, but we had to get across. This was where the lightning was striking, coming from the sky to our right and angled downward into the cavern, like there was something there. There was something here that was making the ground vibrate just a little, and it wasn’t the lightning. Though, the echo the lightning made from the cavern below was ominous.

At the ledge of the path I turned around to Liam, “This is going to be close.”

“Run and jump?”

“I would use the jump jets to be safe.” I said as I walked a meter back. I turned around and sprinted, jumping at the last second and activating my jump jet to give me an extra boost. I definitely overkilled it with the jet, as I almost smacked myself against the following ledge afterwards.

“Damn, Ryder! Be careful.” Liam yelled at me as he started his jump.

I made a grunted noise back at him. If I had been more confident in my jump, I wouldn’t have to worry about now getting over this ledge. I used my jet to boost myself up and over, then waited on Liam to catch up before moving further into the mountain.

“That’s it. We’re getting there.” Liam assured me, though I think he was mostly reassuring himself at this point. I wasn’t exactly the most graceful person alive.

Deeper into the mountain, the sky opened back up overhead as the lightning struck down.  _ This was definitely a weird formation. _ The path was once again broken and narrowed, thus I had to jump across, this time being more careful with my leap. I was panting at this point, but I looked ahead, there was another ledge with the tentacle plants and greener grass on top. Light shown through as well, finally we were reaching the top of the mountain. “I think I see the top.” I said hopefully.

“Woah, really?” Liam replied rhetorically as he was making his way across. As I waited for him I looked over the edge I was on down to the cavern, it looked like the mountain had crumbled at this spot, but there was something underneath the loose boulders and rocks.

I met Liam at the base of the final ledge. “Almost there...think we’ll find the others up over?”

“I damn well hope so, Ryder.” I used my jet to get up, climbing the rest of the way over. Liam followed up but instead extended his arm to me as he held onto the edge. “Mind making some room?” I grabbed his arm and helped him up. “Thanks.” He panted. Hell, we were both sore and fatigued. We both turned to face ahead and saw in the far distance the top of the alien structure. Dark clouds swirled over it as many thicker lightning bolts struck around it. The building was tall and pointed at an angle, and at the top looked like blue swirling energy that met the clouds. “What...the hell is that?” A surge of blue energy left the top following the swirl, and as it reached the top where it connected to the clouds it released into the atmosphere with a loud boom followed by a static echo. The light flashed brighter blue and Liam and I covered our eyes.

“It’s not a hotel, that’s for sure. Nothing around here makes any sense.” I changed my expression to more of a worried curiosity. I wanted to check it out, but at the same time a little voice inside my head was telling me to stay the hell away from it. Couldn’t tell at this point if it was a rational or irrational thought.

Liam looked at me to respond. “New galaxy, new ways to die.”

“Hopefully not today.” I started walking forward with him. There was a small ledge in front of us that merely acted as a half wall, and the closer we got the more we could see over it. The top of half of our shuttle was showing, and I could hear the crackling of the fire around it.  _ Oh hey! _ There was a man sitting up against the wreckage.

Liam grabbed my arm. “Ryder- it’s Fisher.” He fast-walked over but I stopped him and pulled him down behind the wall. There was more than the crackling of the fire, it was the crunch of heavy footsteps against dry and dead grass. Someone else was here.

“Wait...look!” I sternly told him as I carefully looked over the wall.

There were three aliens scrounging the wreckage. Digitigrade legs, dark green armor that didn’t cover their arms or face which suggested they could breathe the air, a heavy gun that matched their armor with a sight and a light coming off the scope. One kicked over a piece of rubble and I could see his face clearer, it looked like they had an external skeleton or at least a hard carapace around their head and jaw and all over their arms, in this lighting it looked like a white egg shell. The carapace had many ridges that I could see from this distance, and the forearms had some of it sticking out further almost like a natural blade. The fleshy part of the face looked like a deep brown color, and I could tell it was thick skin. The backs of their heads came out to a point, similar to what one would find on an insect. Their brow bones jutted out from their face most likely from the carapace. It wasn’t like a turian’s or a krogan’s either, the carapace that I could see was thick and looked heavily layered. They had the average three fingers and toes on each hand and foot like the Milky Way, save for three species. One thing I found odd, they all looked like clones of each other. I have great facial recognition, not just of humans either, but none of them looked any different, even their armor looked like a replica. They definitely weren’t quiet with their footsteps.

“Holy shit.” Liam gasped as he looked over. “What was first contact protocol again?” 

“No deadly force unless fired upon.” I whispered back.

“Yeah, said no one in the field ever. How do we handle it?”

“Take it easy. We only get one shot at ‘hello’ with these guys.”  _ No sense in expecting everyone to be the same. _

“Yeah, and Fisher gets shot in the head if we’re wrong.” Liam didn’t agree with me, but I don’t want to judge a new race too soon. They might not seem friendly in Milky Way standards, but why should I expect anyone in Andromeda to abide by our standards and cultures?

We stand up and carefully go over the rock we were hiding behind. It was a small decline to the shuttle and the other species. I hold up my hands to show I am unarmed. “Nice and easy...we only go hot if we have to.” I tell Liam.

“Don’t think they’ve spotted us yet.” Liam followed me.

I walk slowly but make my presence known, when both of the aliens saw us I stopped. They ran to face us at a distance yelling something that couldn’t be translated. “Niad shurid!”

Liam stopped. “He sees us!” He tells me as if I didn’t know.

“We can’t understand you.” I calmly reply back. My heart was pounding in my chest and I could hear it against my ears, and it felt as if time was stopped. I was trembling because I didn’t want to mess this up. I slowly continued forward to get a better view on Fisher. “We’re not here to fight! That man’s with us!” I motioned toward Fisher.

“Niad shurid!” The same alien yells back. I noticed the other alien walking over towards Fisher.

“Doesn’t sound friendly…” Liam said through gritted teeth. “What’s the other guy doing?” He noticed the other walk over to Fisher as well.

The alien took out something I couldn’t quite tell what it was but then tried to stab Fisher on the side of his neck, a clear hostile action. Adrenaline pumped through me as I brought out my holstered pistol and took aim. “Woah, hey!” I yelled out.

“Niad shurid!” They repeated again and opened fire. I felt one of their blasts disintegrate against my shields, that’s when I ducked over for cover. Liam went to another rock cover adjacent from me. What I could tell when I got hit was that they used energy projectiles, too, which is a good sign because my shields could handle a hit or two, but that also meant that they probably had shields, too.

I stayed down in cover as I heard their guns firing, Liam then threw a grenade at the one furthest away from Fisher. I heard it beep then an explosion with a slight tremble of the ground. I looked back up to see that the alien had successfully managed to dodge the grenade, and I realized that I had to start shooting back at some point. I sincerely didn’t want to, I’ve seen people dying or dead but I haven’t been the cause of it.  _ Shape up, Sara, it’s self defence and more people will die if you don’t get in there. _ I looked over the cover and took aim at one of their heads, and each shot I swear I missed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Liam had popped up and started shooting, his shots seemed to make an impact on the other alien as they staggered back, exposing a kinetic shield that had an orange glow instead of the blue ones we have. I turned to face the one that was staggered and started firing at him, aiming lower at his chest, which seemed to be hitting him. The other alien opened fire on me and I felt my shields break, quickly realizing this I ducked back down into cover.

Liam noticed and moved up in front of me to another cover area. It took a few seconds before my shields started to recharge again, once they were recharged I used my jet to quickly move to the cover Liam was at before. When I had reached the cover, I realized the other alien was dead, only one remained. I looked up and started shooting haphazardly at the alien, an almost guttural scream escaped my lips as the alien finally fell.

I staggered over to Fisher. “O-okay...it’s...it’s over.” I stuttered and felt my jaw tremble.

Liam ran over to Fisher. He was okay, but still on the ground and struggling to sit up straight. “Fisher, are you okay?” Liam knelt down and checked him over.

“So much for making peace with the locals. Thanks for jumping in.” Fisher responded as rested his head on his hand.

I sighed, “I wish I didn’t have to. The first aliens we meet, and we try to kill each other? That wasn’t the plan.” I spoke quickly as I felt my legs tremble.

Liam looked at me, “Then we need a new one.” He exhaled and stood up, “At least we know what’s what. The brochures were light on aliens who want to shoot your head off.” I let out a harsh grunt and started to pace.

“We still don’t even know what they wanted.” Fisher said.

I kneel down and scan Fisher’s vitals with my omni-tool. Liam picked up what the alien stabbed him with. “The way they treated you? Blood samples, I’d say. Lots of them.” He sternly said as he tossed the syringe aside.

I put down my scanner and head. “Who says we’d even understand?” I asked in a pitiful tone and looked back up. “Or they’d understand us?” I stood up but not without my usual anxious tremors making everything harder. “It’s a new galaxy. New customs and cultures. They might not play by Milky Way rules. None of us should expect that of them.”

Liam pointed at one of the dead bodies. “They broke the rules in any galaxy.”  _ Morality is a social construct… not a universal. Their home, their rules. _

“But why go after us like that?” Fisher said as he rolled his head.

“Only thing I know for sure, their guns hit just as hard as ours.” Liam said.

“They also seem to use shields and energy blasts similar to ours. Our technology, at least in military standards, are equal so far.” I added.

Liam quickly turned around to face Fisher. “Where are the others?”

“Gone.” Fisher answered breathlessly. “Kirkland and Greer went looking for help.” I lean down and offered my hand to him, but as he tried to stand up he yelled out in pain and fell back down clutching his thigh. “Ah! My leg!”

“Can you move?” I ask in a worried tone. I tried to keep focus on one thing at a time, but I could feel my body pulse and blood run through me as the realization started to settle that I had blood on my hands.

“I think it’s broken. You guys push ahead and look for the others.”

“You s-sure?” I stuttered as my fingers helplessly tried to move around my gun but my hand gripped harder. Everything felt sweaty...I felt like I was ungrounded, that I just wanted to death grip onto something and never let go. I felt like I was falling again…  _ In...one...two...three...four...five _ .

“Yeah.” Fisher answered. “Just find us a ride out of here.”  _ Out...one...two...three...four...five...six...seven.  _ “And take a few more of them out while you’re at it.” 

“Do you have a med kit near you? Or a gun for that case?” I ask.

“Yeah, they’re in that case over there.” He pointed to a sturdy crate not far behind me. 

“I can go get some for you.” I walked over to the crate and opened it up to grab a couple of guns and med kits.

I heard Liam beside one of the bodies. “Woah. Take a look at these bodies. What are these things?”

I took an assault rifle for myself just in case I needed to switch guns and stood back up. “People. Liam. They’re people.” I walked back over to Fisher and handed him a pistol and two med kits.

“Thanks.” He grunted as he took the supplies.

I walked over to one of the dead bodies and brought out my scanner. When the scan completed, it left more questions than answers:

 

_ Unknown Lifeform _

_ DATA: _

_ Organic lifeform _

_ Unknown composition 35% _

_ Unknown composition 26% _

_ Unknown composition 22% _

_ Unknown composition 17% _

_ Type: Uncatalogued lifeform _

 

_ Analysis: _

_ [SAM currently offline] _

 

“Well, I don’t have SAM, but I can try to make sense of it. They’re DNA-based. And their armor reads as some kind of bone. But the genetics are all over the map.” I read more off of my omni-tool.

“Huh.” Liam shrugged. “I guess life took a different turn here, huh?” I sighed as I put away my omni-tool. “I hope the other team’s okay.” Liam continued.

“Only one way to find out. We gotta look for them. But we might want to scout around first.”  _ Way too many questions here. _

“You’re the Recon Specialist. Point the way.”

“Right.”  _ Recon Specialist… at least it’s better than pathetic, or leech, or weak… worthless.  _ I sighed.  _ I can’t get caught up in things that happened in the past. I’m here now, and if I stop, then people die. It’ll be my fault. _

“Hey, your gun work ain’t so bad.” Liam and I started walking.

“Eh, spent time with an Alliance peacekeeping force.”  _ Less than a year.  _ By the shuttle wreckage was an ammo crate, Liam and I picked up enough to reload.

We walked past the wreckage and fire and there was a mountain that divided the way into two, left and right. The left side went upwards a bit and the right side went downwards, we were surrounded by mountains, or tall narrow hills. Whatever we were on, it’s like someone took a hammer to a glass ball and left the shards on this planet, one on top of the other.

I decided on following the right path downwards, even though it didn’t stay going down for long, just seemed like a small crater. Lo and behold, there was another part of the shuttle here surrounded by fire. 

This walk felt quick and silent, even by my own thoughts. I walked around the fire, giant glowing mushrooms beside me and tentacle plants on top of ledges, it seemed those yellow tentacles preferred high ground with sunlight. 

_ ZAP _ ! A strike of lightning hit near by the shuttle, startling me and forced a yelp out of my lungs. I took a minute to regain my breath.

The path went up a slope, seemed like an up and over thing. “Do you hear that?” Liam asked.

I listened closely and could hear gunfire out in the distance. “Shit.” I pulled out my pistol. Liam and I crept over the slope, and we could hear the aliens in their native tongue.

“Gosad!”

“Duheth!”

“Shurid hesh!’

Three of them, surrounding a passive man. “Is that Kirkland?” Liam whispered.

“Lutod nyro!” Their voices, all three of them, sounded hoarse and tenor pitched. Strangely, they all sounded the exact same.

“Please! I-I surrender!” Kirkland stuttered with his hands up. It seemed like they took a second to recognize his surrender, and I was hopeful.  _ Maybe the last group was just curious? Trigger happy?” _

“Lutod nyro!” One repeated.

“I said I surrender!” Kirkland sounded anxious. I was about to put my gun down and approach but one of the aliens shot him and he went down with a blood-curdling scream. 

“They shot him!” Liam yelled out, going straight into shooting the bastards. I bunkered down behind a slab of the building besides us. It felt like my heart was pounding against my ears.  _ Fuck, fuck, fuck… _

Liam and I went back and forth popping up out of cover to shoot, my shots missed more often and were more hesitant, but Liam’s was more erratic.  _ Maybe if I didn’t hesitate, Kirkland would still be alive… damnit!  _ Each time I popped up I could sometimes feel my shields disintegrating the bullets, feeling the slight force of the hit every time. The last time I came back up to try to finish off one of the aliens, my shields went down and I felt a bullet scathe my armor. I let out a yelp of surprise and Liam told me to stay down until my shields recharged.

“You want a fight? I’ll give you one!” Liam shouted as he got up and finished them off. I felt a slight vibration as my shields began to recharge. “That was the last of them.” Liam said as he stood up to scope the area.

“I-I can’t believe we’re doing this.” I stuttered, the battle felt like autopilot to me and I was still processing what had happened to Kirkland.  _ I should have known...if I knew maybe he wouldn’t be dead. _

“Did Kirkland make it?” Liam asked as he saw me finally stand up. I jogged over to where Kirkland lay.

As I kneeled down, I saw his helmet had shattered and his face covered in blood and tissue. He was almost unrecognizable. I scanned him to see exactly what killed him. “No vital signs. Shot in cold blood. Toxic and unbreathable air.”

“He was trying to surrender. Why kill him?” Liam clenched his teeth.

I shook my head and looked up at him, “Would we treat them any different if they showed up to Earth, armed to the teeth?” I want to at least try to empathize with these aliens.  _ Maybe they’re scared? Threatened? Are they at war with another species here and cannot trust us at all? Am I wrong for trying to see the good in them as I look into the dead face of one of my own?  _ I felt numb, emotionally numb and tired. I wanted to wake up.

Liam sighed. “Maybe not.”

I looked down at the lifeless body and closed my eyes. “I don’t think peace will be an option here.” My body tensed at the sound of thunder in the distance and I stood back up. “We’ll,” I sighed, “come back for his body once we find the others.”

“Good plan. Hope Greer’s still alive somewhere.” Liam ran his fingers over the strange building by us. “Still, take a look at this architecture. It’s really something.”

I crept up to it, a bit triangular in shape but formed into the mountain. It looked like a closed archway, and had signs of being a reinforced door. Sleek design and not a crack to be seen. I took out my omni-tool and scanned it, found readings of it being 300-400 years old and made out of unclassified and unknown material.  _ If SAM was connected, we could possibly make sense of what this is. _ “I’ve seen Prothean artifacts in my time, but nothing like this. It’s at least three or four centuries old.” 

“The Ark left 600 years ago, right?” He asked.

“Yeah. Our long-range scans wouldn’t have shown this.” I backed up a bit and stared in awe. “These structures...that tower...maybe none of it was here when we left the Milky Way.” I had let out a nervous laugh. I looked up, this was more than just inside of a mountain because I saw the top of this structure poking up. I turned around and almost screamed, a small geometrical pillar was now sticking out of the ground with what looked to be a circuitboard of blue lines crawling around it. On top of the pillar was a levitating expanded block that looked like a sphere and a small blue light emitted from the center. “Okay...now this is weird.” I scanned it. “Even with these readings, I have no idea what it does.” It was 90% unknown material and it seemed the only purpose was to provide light.

Liam scoffed. “Just imagine the mind that invented it.”

I suddenly got the feeling to just scream. To run away. To hide in a corner and just literally cry to death. I knew it was another panic attack but it was just so hard to shake off with everything going on around me. “If that’s even possible.” I had let out another nervous laugh. “Evolution separated from ours by two million light years...or more.” 

“Spooky when you put it that way.” Liam concluded. We continued onward.

It had constantly felt like I had my scanner up, and every now and again I would look up at the blue and grey swirling cloud that hung over the distant tower. Every so often a burst of energy came screaming out of the top of it. So much was happening around me, so many loud noises from the tower and sky. The sound of Kirkland’s scream echoed in my head. My legs went on autopilot as we continued through. My mind replayed scenes and went through everything I could’ve done differently and maybe things wouldn’t be this way. At the same time I knew damn well that I wouldn’t have done anything different. I’m no hero. I’m a ball of constant stress and anxiety about to implode in on herself. I wanted to go home, but even if I could, over 1000 years would have passed and it wouldn’t be home anymore. The friends I grew up with are now all dead, same fate with any cousins that I never knew I had. Only two of my closest friends followed here but they’re still in stasis. All I want to do is crawl into Mother’s arms, but she’s also dead. With these types of thoughts rampaging through my mind, I felt heavy and sick physically. Being in this situation, it felt almost impossible to think rationally. And inside my mind I beat myself up over it like I was weak. If I saw this happening to Liam or Cora, I wouldn’t call them weak.  _ Why am I such a hypo- _

A low growl emitted from the brush. Liam and I had stopped in our tracks. “Shit. Did you hear that?” He whispered.

“I wish I didn’t.” I glanced around.

The foliage moved and I heard thumping sounds, I readied my weapon. “The hell’s that?” Liam pointed at what seemed to be a cloaked creature. The only way we could see it is that it wasn’t fully transparent and light acted weird around the form. The creature growled and uncloaked, and it was terrifying. It looked like it would’ve come from the same planet as the aliens we were fighting, it had bones on certain parts of its body and covering its head almost in the shape of a hammerhead shark. It’s tail had spikes, it walked on four legs and reminded me of a bigger, but armored dog. It’s teeth barred before us and charged. “There! Watch out!” Liam yelled. “What is this thing?”

It cloaked again. “I think it wants to eat us!” I concluded. I looked around the side of a rock that went up hill to find the alien creature visible again, but it spat out a green ball at me. “Woah!” I had gone back into cover just in time to see this green spit land in my sight, but not on me. I watched as the spit seemed to dissolve the foliage. “Watch out! It has range!”

“Yeah, I saw!” Liam was also behind cover.

I heard the thumping as it charged. I poked out of cover and fired multiple shots into its boney head. Even as I shot at it, it just kept charging at me, until one of my shots broke and shattered the exoskeleton on its head. Even though majorly wounded, it just shook off the fragments and looked up at me with searing hatred. Whatever it is, it also had an intact internal skeleton, too, and all I did was piss it off.

“Holy shit!” Liam threw a grenade at it and it exploded under the beast. Either it was a weak grenade or a very powerful creature because it was thrown back and some bone fragments spread across the field, but it itself wasn’t entirely split apart. Some limbs hung by a thread, and it was bleeding in various places. Even though critically wounded and would die at any moment, it still looked at me and showed no sign of pain but utter hatred. It didn’t even seem phased. It just wanted us dead, and tried until its dying breath to get up and attack us.  _ I don’t care what galaxy we are in, no animal does this. _ “Okay...it’s dead.” Liam sighed.

“Whatever  _ it _ was.” I was out of breath.

“How’d it cloak like that?” Liam put his gun away.

I pulled out the scanner. Similar to the sapient aliens, it was an organic lifeform but made out of many different unknown compounds. “It’s organic. No sign of technology.”

“Wow. So the cloaking is...biological?” He sounded worried, but so was I.

I nodded, “Yeah...weird.”

We continued on up the path. The ground shook immensely, like a small quake, which made both of us lose our balance for a moment. I looked back to Liam and was about to say something then I saw his face light up and he pointed to the sky, “Hey, look,” I turned back around and up to see two red dots rise then vanish, “flares going up! Over there!” Our minds turned off from the tremor, and I looked at my compass, northwest it seemed, up over or around jagged rocks and valleys.

“Could be our people.” I said. “I’ll mark the navpoint as best as I can.” I didn’t see the aliens use flares, so it’s either a trap with the rest of the crew, and my father, dead or trapped, or it’s them.  _ Prepare for the worst, hope for the best? _ Another tremor happened and shook our feet, this time it came along with the deafening sound of an energy blast, similar to the one being emanated by the tower.  _ Must be the tower, are we really that close? Or is the blast just that powerful? _ We continued into a clearing, kind of- it looked like the ground collapsed, with a few areas still standing at level. The hole was deep, and I could see some kind of glow or tech from within, dark shiny metal laced with a blue energy or glow. Along the sides of the path leading to this clearing were structures, dark shiny metal laced with a blue energy. The structures didn’t seem to have a purpose with scans other than maybe landmarks or just simply decoration. Upon closer inspection, the leveled areas turned out to be platforms made out of the same material as the landmarks surrounding, they seemed to be stable enough, and was supported by whatever from down below in the deep hole. “What do you suppose is down there?”

Liam approached the edge where I was standing and looked down, “New and painful ways to die?”

I looked up and saw the light glow from a mushroom inside of a cavern on the other side, the platforms, though sporadic, seemed to be able to get us to the other side. “Maybe we could jump-jet our way across.”

As we jumped to a nearby platform, a small tremor along with a strange hum emanated once again. Liam got his balance. “Is that sound coming from below?”

I looked over the edge of the platform, and I had zero idea what any of this was. “Um...alien gods of the underworld, maybe?” I shrugged. As crazy as it sounded, well, all of this was crazy. I gave a nervous chuckle, ignoring the panic from my heart.

“Don’t say that.” Liam responded. He knew too, that it could somewhat be the case, maybe not gods per say, but something just as crazy, if not more.

“It’s my best guess.” I said as I jumped to a lower platform.

“Really?” His voice pitched higher.

“I think it’s machinery. You can feel the vibration.” It was numbing my feet, which was both a good and a bad thing. Good because now I can’t really feel the ache and pain, bad because if I slip and fall on one of these platforms I can kiss my ass goodbye. With that thought I gave out a vocal nervous laugh.

“Um...what?” He asked.

“Watch your footing is all I have to say.”

He followed me across some of the platforms, stopping here and there. “The scale of all this… Who built it?”

I knew the question was rhetorical, a good question at that, and were they friend or foe? Or did they just not give a damn? “Alien gods…” I just had to respond. Jokes have always been a coping mechanism. The area down below was foggy as well, and sparks of blue light jumped across the metal in the chasm like lightning, some gave off the tremors we kept feeling. “The energy this place is giving off must be off the charts.”

“So off the metaphorical charts that we can see and feel it?” I guess he likes to joke and cope, too.

“Heh…yeah.” The platforms were weird. It composed of a few hexagonal pillars that fit together. This place could’ve been a bridge of some sort but then collapsed. Some of the pillars that met together to make a full platform were lower slightly than its siblings. So, we really had to watch our footing. 

As a person who is more afraid of falling than heights, and these platforms weren’t  _ that _ big, and didn’t seem so stable especially with the pillars that made it up being on different levels, I had a constant feeling of uneasiness, a strange dizziness, and it felt like I had no balance. I knew it was technically all in my head, being a curious hypochondriac did not help my case whatsoever, and since learning about the whole  _ call of the void _ thing many years ago, each time I’m by an edge I get this feeling like I cannot control myself, and then I start to panic.  _ Ah, what a fucking mess I am. _ I used my jump-jet to get to one of the further platforms, and nearly missed, causing my blood to run cold and that moment felt longer than it actually was. My own tremors started.  _ I gotta get off...I gotta get off... I gotta get off.. _

“Be careful, Ryder!” Liam jumped over and grabbed my arm to help me stand up straight.

“I know, I know. Thanks.” I need a minute to silence my throbbing thoughts, but I don’t exactly have a minute. “Just...one...more.” I sighed. “We got this.”

“We’re really going to keep doing this, huh?” Liam jumped with me across to the last platform, which connected to actual ground and lead up to the cavern.

“I want to know what’s here.” I said clearly. “Even if it pains me.” I muttered.

“Right,” Liam responded cautiously, “ _ Recon Specialist _ .” 

“Yeah.”   
“Ryder, is that what you’re interested in? That cave?” He pointed with his head.

“Well, it has lifeforms in it. Even if it’s a sort of fungus that we don’t understand, something is thriving there and yeah, it’s kinda calling right now.” It also feels safer than the  _ call of the void _ back there. The area I saw the mushroom was more of an overhang to the cave, but it had a narrow and long entrance into it, and I saw natural light bouncing off of something tall and green. Hope sparked in my bones, “Liam, c’mon!” and I started running towards it.

“What?” He ran with me. Running did alleviate my shakiness a bit but not all the way, and because of it, my footing was sloppy at best.

“Green!” I just yelled. After the passageway was a small ledge into the cave, a small cave and a bit rounded, but there was fresh grass, bushes, and a tree growing under where the sun shone through the small hole in the tall ceiling. Hell, there were even vines. I couldn’t help the relieved laugh that escaped from the back of my throat, and the pure happiness that bubbled from my core. “Green, Liam! Green! Lots of it!” I felt like dancing, and I kinda did but I tripped on myself and rolled my ankle, caught myself on the nearby rock.

“Damn, Ryder, care...ful… Woah…” He caught up. “Would you look at that.”

I was so happy and relieved that I did cry a bit. I felt like I could take off my helmet to breathe, but I knew that this area wasn’t enough to make the air breathable. I felt oddly calm and safe, surrounded by rock walls and plants… _ live _ plants. “Now, this looks more like the golden world we were expecting. Maybe the world that once was 600 years ago.” We jumped down the ledge and basked ourselves in the warm glow around us. I don’t know how Liam felt exactly, but it was healing me mentally a bit.  _ Not everything is dead and shit, thankfully. _

“Then, the long-range scans were right? This could’ve been home?”

“Yeah...before well, whatever happened during our time traveling.” I approached the tree, which looked like a short, fat palm tree with its leafs’ tips facing upwards, and underneath the leafs near the base, it looks like an orange to yellow to green sunburst. The bark of the tree had spikes all around it, like a cactus, it also had multiple trunks coming from the ground, though the main one was thick. The vines and bushes that surrounded this tree seemed to be quite different from the rest of the flora, almost like without the tree these species close to it would not survive. Or vise versa. The grass around us also had little orange and yellow bulbs at the tip of their blades. It was all alien to us, but oh so wonderful and comforting. I took out my scanner and ran the interface around the tree to get a thorough scan.  _ Polyploidy lifeform. Chloroplasts detected. Photosynthesis detected. Other: High variance in cellular mutation detected, unknown type. SAM offline. _ “Well, if it’s similar to plants back home- er, back in the Milky Way, it does show signs of cellular mutation. Unknown which kind, though.”

Liam let out a relieved chuckle. “It’s lasted this long. Guess that makes it the alpha tree, huh?”

“Heh, I mean, sure, look at the plants around it. But what happened to the others back outside?”

“Something bad I would assume.” Liam peered around the tree. “You see that?” 

On the ground there was a large metal ring, and it had a dome or shield encompassing some sort of dead creature inside. I went up cautiously and scanned the creature to make sure it wasn’t just playing dead.  _ Uncatalogued lifeform. Status: No vital signs. SAM offline.  _ “Dead animal, recent, and in some sort of trap.” The animal seemed to be some kind of crustacean, large, carapace, six legs, two giant claws, but the abdomen resembled more of a spiders’. It was creepy, especially since this animal spanned the length of my midsection.  _ I hope it’s not inherently hostile when it’s alive. _

“Maybe the aliens got it?” Liam approached to take a closer look.

“If they did, then they don’t play nice with anyone.” 

“They probably got to eat too, Ryder.” He looked back at me. He shook his head and sighed, “How is this even possible?”

“Um...could you be more specific?” I asked.

He did a full turn with arms out, “This. This...cave. The part that this is like a different ecosystem in such a small area.”

“Hmm...  Extreme microclimate? The cave could’ve shielded this place all this time.” I gave my best guess.

“And the rest of the planet?”

I shook my head, “Not sure. Whatever it is, it won’t be an easy answer to find. Especially since it seems extremely deadly.” I heard Liam sigh. “But, this is a huge symbol of hope. That life can actually thrive here on this planet. In Andromeda.” The cave seemed like a mini-jungle with all the plants.

“Do you think that those aliens did this? Maybe this was their home and they messed it up. Like when the krogan nuked their homeworld, and how we almost did the same to Earth.” Liam observed with me.

“Maybe. Though, the tech we have seen so far? Like in that chasm back there, and even that tower in the distance. It all seems too advanced for the aliens we are fighting.” I looked at him.

“How can you tell?”

“Well, think about it. That door that we scanned? The pillars back there? All of this, whatever it is, is really advanced and my scanner cannot make heads or tails of it. But when we see the aliens fight, their weapons and shields are on par with our own. That door back there? Practically impenetrable with our tech. Why wouldn’t their shields be just as advanced?” I went off on a slight rant.

Liam took a moment to think. “Yeah, it is strange. But...hmm...no, that wouldn’t make sense either. Maybe there is more alien life here and they’re at war?”

“Don’t you think they would’ve died to those with superior tech? We aren’t talking about a couple years in advance, we are talking hundreds of years. This tech goes down deep into the planet, and that tower out there? Seems to be doing something to the atmosphere.”

“This is tough. We should scan more of the tech then, don’t you think?” Liam asked.

I nodded, “Oh, yes, of course. We need to find out all we can if we are to even think about living here.” I looked around a bit more, then I saw another entrance to the cave. “Then again...we can’t find more without exploring more.” This area also had a ledge, but no narrow pathway, just a small entrance to the rest of the world. I motioned Liam to follow and we used our jump-jets to get over the ledge, back into hell. Up ahead there was some sort of tech or light that I couldn’t recognize.

I rushed over to the intriguing tech, there was more than just lights, there were wires of some kind and canisters and large crates. All had the same look about them, some greenish, grey, and black colors with more circular textures and designs. Some stuck out like bubbles. Liam rushed up to me and whispered, “Ryder, we got movement to our left, be careful.” I checked my omni-tool for clarification, he was right and there was a lot, well for the two of us. I didn’t want to tango with them, so I tried to be as silent and stealthy as possible. I scanned around and kept getting the same information for everything;  _ Unknown technology. Function unknown. SAM offline. _ We saw the same tech to our left, where the movement was.

“Maybe we can take them out stealthily?” I asked.

“We don’t exactly have the equipment for that. No cloaking installed into our omni-tools. No silent weapons. The only melee we have is our omni-tools. That’s if we can get close enough to do damage.” Liam shook his head. “Is the tech worth trying?”

“Maybe. Won’t know until we get up there to scan it.” I responded as I hid behind a rock for cover. Technically we had the high ground, it was a gentile slope downhill from where we were. I peered around to see what we were dealing with. “It’s those aliens, and they seemed to make nice with that cloaking animal from earlier.”

Liam seemed frustrated, but his movements were silent. “Damn. And we really don’t know if it’s worth it?”

“Nope.”

“What did you get on those?” He pointed to the tech I had scanned minutes before.

“Nothing, and that we needed SAM pretty much.” I sat up against the rock as my muscles were shaking from use.

“Ugh...why can’t the scan be enough? Why do we  _ need _ SAM? If we built him with the technology to understand, why couldn’t he be in our scanners?”

“Ask my dad. He built SAM. It was all kinda hurried, though, and he had to do it in secret. Hell, the Initiative launched earlier than expected. We might not have had enough time to incorporate all of this for easier access.” I responded as best as I could. Trying to make sense of it all. “I guess after this we can try to incorporate all the abilities that we can into our omni-tools.”

“I’ll work with you on that. No issue or complaint from me.” He agreed wholeheartedly.

“It’s up to Dad, though. He’s the big guy in charge and the one with SAM.” I reminded him.

“Damn it.” Liam looked away. “Oh, sorry.”

“No, you’re fine. I feel the same way. Anyways, I think we should take our chances. We came to Andromeda to explore, right?” I nudged him. I gave out my best acting, because I wasn’t truly confident in my decision at all. But, maybe there was a translator down there that would give us an edge. Maybe a map.  _ Maybe more of our people. _

_ Or there’s nothing and we died in vain. _ I pursed my lips.  _ Shut up, now’s not the time. _ Liam interrupted my thoughts, “All right.” He let out a slow breath. “We can do this.” I nodded and poked around the rock and tried to aim, the alien started running before I could get out a shot. “Shit, they see us!” Liam yelled. I shot almost erratically trying to get this alien. They were well equipped and prepared for battle.

Liam threw a grenade and I moved to another rock for better sight. The aliens had set up crates everywhere, and the placement wasn’t an accident. “Here we go!” I yelled back. My shields took a couple of hits and I used my jump-jet to move faster and dodge.

“Not much for talking are they?” Liam continued.

I didn’t give a response as my eyes caught the glimpse of a cloaked animal, the way light seemed to morph around the form. “Watch out, Liam. They got those cloakers, and they’re out.” I saw one uncloak just as it came where I was hiding. I used my jump-jet to spring back, bad move because I was out in the open once again and I didn’t land properly resulting in ass-to-ground. My shields took more hits and they were down. I used my jump-jet again to hide behind one of the crates that I tried to scan earlier.

Liam shot down one of the aliens shouting, “This is for Kirkland!”

One of the aliens was trying to flank me, they were close enough for me to get a couple hits in without focusing too much on aiming.  _ Damn, I really need to practice. _ “You hanging in there?” I asked Liam, though it probably should’ve been the other way around. 

“Don’t worry about me!” He responded. 

Just as I was about to poke back out and continue shooting the alien, a cloaked animal sprang from in front of my sights, missed me with its leap, but got a scream from me, and I was ass-to-ground once again. I shot at it over and over again, was even close enough to use my omni-tool to shock it, and it died after the shock. I watched its dead body continue to twitch as I scooted back up to cover, thankfully I wasn’t hit and my shields were back up to 100% as I reached the cover once again. My heart was racing, and I could hear it through my chest, it wasn’t an internal hearing. Liam could hear it too if he was close enough. I tried to reload my pistol, but I was out. Quickly, I switched to the assault rifle I picked up from earlier. I used it to finish off the flanking alien.

Liam and I moved around the field, firing left and right. His shots more precise than mine, especially since I was not used to an assault rifle.  _ Hitting non-moving targets are so much easier… _ Liam combined his shooting with periodic grenade throwing, and it’s a damn good thing he has good aim. I combined my shooting, if one would call it that, and periodic shocking, cause at least that hit. 

The last alien standing was downhill and behind a small rock cover, and I thought it would be a good idea to try out a new tactic. Thought. I used my jump-jet to get above the alien, and prepared my omni-tool for a shocking smash. I landed, just not where I wanted and ended up killing the grass around the alien, and hurting my wrist and shields in the process. Though it did give the alien a surprise and forced out of cover as I was right behind them.  _ I am not cool yet. Why are you thinking about this? These are lives that you’re killing, and you’re worried about the coolest way to kill them? I didn’t mean it seriously, and it was trying a new tactic anyways. But who would actually try that? Stupid… _ Liam finished the alien and exclaimed, “That’s all. We did it, Ryder! Not sure what that last move was, but it did push it out of cover.” He patted me. “You did alright, Ryder. Need some practice but, it was a good run.”

I put away my gun. “I was with a science team that dug up Prothean artifacts. We worked with the Alliance often.” 

“Well, this must be a field day for you.”

“Not exactly. Again, I was just a scientist.” I sighed. “I wonder what these guys were doing here?”

Liam approached the main site. It was covered in the alien’s tech, wires and crates everywhere. “Crash of some kind. Not one of our ships.” Lo and behold, there was a shuttle of some kind on fire. I took out my scanner.  _ Unknown ship. Unclassified vessel. Propulsion unknown. SAM offline. _

I walked around more with my scanner. “Definitely not from the Milky Way.”

Liam was also scouting the area. “One of theirs. Think the storm got it?”

“More than likely. You know, if this was their planet, they’d probably know how to traverse through the storms.” I continued scanning.

“So, just as alien as we are?” He asked.

“Yeah, guess so.” I scanned more objects that all had unknown functions, I let out groans at the frustration of it. I finally got a scan from an odd crate. I furrowed my brows. “It’s food… I think.”

“Can’t be local. Nothing is really growing here.” 

“Right. Off-world.” I responded.

He let out a groan. “More reason to think there’s more out there. Not a fun thought.”

“You feel that?” I noticed the tremors again, Liam nodded. “Think we are close to the chasm again? Or maybe another one?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Worth a look?”

“Yeah, let’s continue.” Up a small ledge or two and we are back at the chasm, no way across from the area we were standing. I carefully peered over the edge, still the same metal and fog with sparks as before. “Long drop.” I was holding my breath, and when I couldn’t take standing by the edge anymore, I let out a long sigh and backed away.

Liam placed his hand on my shoulder, “You see that over there?” He pointed.

There was a small passageway leading around to where we came from before the cave. It lead to both the cave and the side of the chasm. “Let’s go.” I started to walk that way when a tremor hit and made me lose my balance, almost falling off the edge.

“Watch it!” Liam caught my arm and helped me regain my balance. “Hey, that area gets really narrow, and besides we haven’t checked out the area to our right just yet.” He seemed really insistent on not going the way I planned.

“All right. Let’s go check it out.” I wasn’t going to complain, it was more solid ground over there. We turned around and walked through the field a ways and then up a small hill. A lightning struck right behind me and left a ringing in my ears. Up the hill, still facing the area where the chasm is, we found more platforms leading back but there was another place we hadn’t gone yet. “Hmm… We go back across, there’s an unknown area over there.” I pointed. “But, if we go back to where the cave was, but go the opposite direction of the field, that’s another unexplored area.”

“You’re the Recon Specialist.” Liam reminded me.

I sighed. “Let’s go back over the chasm.” He agreed and followed me. I could feel the vibration of the tech underneath my feet, and hear the echoes of the huge static down below in the fog. I used my jump-jet to get to a platform but landed wrong and instead landed on the edge of a pillar and fell down to the pillar slightly below with an  _ oof _ .

“Damn, Ryder. You sure as hell fall down a lot.” Liam said as he helped me back up. 

I grunted but thanked him as I stood back up. “Thankfully, I took some survival training. Doesn’t help my aim. Dad really wanted me to join the military. I couldn’t bring myself to join, even through his pressuring.”

Liam must’ve heard my tone or thoughts, he placed his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, you know,” He started, “there have been many people, throughout human history at least, that have never killed a man. One even showed up in a few fictional movies. His character that he played in those movies? That character refused to kill, and many people called that character weak. Shit. And worse terms. Then he finally spoke out, defending himself. Most people changed their thoughts, some stayed assholes.” He backed up a bit and sighed. “When we get off this hell-hole of a planet, remind me to send you some links to these movies and such. I think you’ll like them.” 

I let out a small chortle. “Thanks. Just remember, I don’t think there’s an extranet set up here yet.” 

“You’re right, but luckily for you, I have many things saved onto a data disk.” He jumped onto the more stable platform that led directly to solid ground. The platform wasn’t connected to anything down below, and made out of completely different material with traces of the dark metal lining certain parts of this. “Well… C’mon.” I followed suit. There was a small cave off to the side and some noises. It sounded like a weird computer trying to communicate in verbal zeros and ones, but it just sounded slightly different and off. “I wonder what’s in here?” Liam showed as much interest as I. 

We entered slowly, knowing that something was in here. I turned on my helmet flashlight and drew my gun. What I saw was...different. It was made out of the same dark metal as the platforms, but slightly thinner, and its wires and what seemed to be legs, arms, or just tentacles sticking out from the bottom of it, were laced with the blue current. So, the blue is obviously some sort of energy. Thing is, this machine was scanning and hovering over the ground, it could fly over me if it wanted. It had parts jutting out, but looked like it could collapse into a small oval shaped ball of some kind. It was scanning something that was sticking out of the rock in the small cave, it seemed to be what lined the area around the chasm. I quickly drew out my scanner to try and get it, it heard us and turned around. The arms of it folded up into itself, but the top parts stayed open, maybe that was the source of steering and needed these  _ wings _ out to help it fly better? It made an alarmed noise and flew up through the hole in the ceiling. My scanner showed;  _ Data: Mobile robotic platform. Age: 300 to 400 years (approximate). SAM is currently offline. _

“What the-” Liam glimpsed, “Did you see or scan that?”

I went under the hole and looked up, “I scanned it. Some sort of...flying thing.”

“Add it to the list of stuff around here we don’t understand.”  Liam also looked up. Surrounding us were two crates made of the same dark metal, but they were able to be opened. Inside I found fragments, circuits, vials, and some sort of whole object. It seemed to be able to connect to something, it took two hands to hold but not at all heavy. Trapezoid in shape, and on the underside of it looked to be dozens of hexagonal holes.  _ Maybe it plugged into something? _ It seemed to be lined with circuits and some sort of shapes, maybe some kind of language?

“Hey, Liam. Look at this.” I handed to him. “Be careful, looks important.”

He glanced over it cautiously. “It’s a bit big, but it is light. Should we take it?”

“For study, sure. Maybe the creators still exist somewhere and are just going extinct from...something.” I replied.

“Yeah, this place does seem run down.”

I pointed at the symbols on the side. “See this? Could be language of some kind. We get back SAM, or wake up a language decipher, we could possibly have an update to our translators soon.”

“Okay, yeah, but how are we supposed to carry this, and not destroy it in the process?” He handed it back to me. “I get that it’s important but, our bags aren’t with us right now and it’s huge.”

I kneeled down on the ground and unhooked some parts of my armor, Liam questioned me. “I got an idea. Air is hooked up to another part of my armor anyways with a filter and in the helmet.” I used the straps on the back part of my armor to secure it onto my back. I stood up and tested mobility, bending backwards would be an issue but forwards and side to side were fine. “Should work. And it’s centuries old, might even protect my ass if it got shot.”

Liam snickered, “You look like a turtle from behind.” 

“That robot kinda looked like a smashed skittle.” I replied as some kind of retort. He chortled in response. We continued on. 

We backtracked just a bit up the hill, but went a new route around. I still wanted to find Greer and the team, but with what happened to Kirkland, who knows how safe Greer is? Who knows how safe the team is?  _ Who knows how safe Dad is? _ It seemed as if we passed more shuttle pieces that were on fire. The fact the fire can last this long is unnerving. It’s been almost four hours. Then I saw it. “It’s gear from one of our shuttles!” I exclaimed and ran over to it. It seemed to be the only thing that was intact.  _ At least we build some things to withstand the worst _ . I did a quick scan. “Good. The atmospheric sensor is still working. Not the  _ most _ helpful.”

“Let me guess. It says to not breathe the air?” Liam didn’t sound too pleased.

I furrowed my brows at the readings. “Yeah, but no sign of industrial pollutants. That’s not what killed this place. The mystery keeps getting bigger and bigger.” I scrolled through the readings. “No radioactive isotopes either. So, nobody nuked the place.”

“Thoughts?”

I pointed upwards. “How about that big space cloud? There’s energy teeming all over the place. Lightning strikes constantly. Maybe it was an external thing and it’s injecting all the bad stuff into the atmosphere.”

“Bad stuff?” Liam chuckled. “No fancy words this time?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, and a mix of I don’t know.” We were out in the open and the crackling of lightning was upon us once again. “We should move onward.”

“Agreed.”

The path lead up a small hill, a few times grazed by lightning, then there was sort of a fork in the path. Cliff to the left, and just below the cliff to the right, a split in terrain. The compass in my helmet said there was movement on the bottom part, near the alien tech similar to the door we saw last time.

“Hear that?” Liam whispered. I used my jump-jet to climb on top of the cliff and scooted across to get a better view. Liam followed.

“It’s those aliens.” I whispered back.

“Metal or the weird ones?” He asked. 

I rolled my eyes, not that he could see it. “Well, the weird ones. Hostile.” One of them spotted us and shot.  _ Missed. _ I groaned, “Take them out!”

“No choice, they know we’re here now.” I sighed at Liam.

We stayed in the cover on top of the cliff to have high ground, thankfully there was only a few of them. I was able to take out one by stunning them with an electric shock from my omni-tool and fired from my gun. Most of the time I missed my shots, but thankfully having the high ground gave its advantages, one of which was allowing me to shoot one of the aliens that were behind cover and watching as his head exploded. Gruesome sight, green blood, flesh, bone, brains, and more just covered where they were hiding. I hated this. I felt instant regret, I knew it had to be done if we wanted to survive, but I was taking  _ lives _ . My forehead strained from furrowing my brows and I had a serious lump in my throat.  _ They probably had families...friends...lovers...history and culture. _ I shook my head.  _ They shot first, you’re just protecting yourself. Yeah, but did I have to kill them? Maybe not blow one’s head off, but at least they probably died quickly and painlessly. Just keep things short and quick, Sara. It’s you or them, and actually not just you. _

Liam took down the last one. “That was it! We’re clear.”

I sighed, “First species we meet and they’re out for blood.  _ Wonderful _ .”

“Not if we don’t give it to them.” Liam retorted.

Everything just felt numb, colors were bland, the music was nonexistent. I felt like I was floating aimlessly around. Was it bad that I had gotten used to the feeling of my heart beating hard and fast? Was it bad that I felt emotionally numb? We continued onward. I rescanned certain things just to double check, but everything came out the same. We passed the huge door, and the lights that came from the ground, past more fire and debris, up some rocks. It was silent, and so were my thoughts. Again, placed on autopilot, just following the path up and out. I sighed at another fork in the path, this time it didn’t seem to converge unlike the last one. I chose the one that seemed to lead into a cave, or at least some cavern between the mountains. It was away from the bolts of lightning. Though it did lead to another clearing, the ground was dented from a crash, everywhere seemed to be on fire.

“Wreckage ahead. One of our shuttles.” Liam said.

“Think Greer could be near, then?” I approached slowly. It was out in the open and had lightning all around. Just seemed to be a landmine of disasters.

“More than likely. Hopefully alive.” Liam followed.

“It’s the other half of our shuttle.” I approached, careful of the wailing flames around and debris. There were multiple spots to hide thanks to the cargo spilling out. I did a quick scan and thankfully no bodies. 

“What a mess. I can’t believe we survived this…” We both scoured the wreckage.

“Yeah well, we’ve yet to leave the planet.” I said in a dry voice. I was also starting to get a dehydration and stress headache. I looked around and opened containers to try and scavenge. I didn’t get far until Liam pulled me behind cover.

“Shit… Movement, Ryder. I can’t see them.” We both looked around the cover to see that we were surrounded by the hostile aliens. “Ambush!” Liam yelled. We scurried to different cover. Though we were at a disadvantage, we had to at least try.

I hid behind one of the crates that came from the cargo. “Fuck!” Was all I had to say. I shot at much as I could for as long as my shields would allow before moving around.

“Shit!” Liam yelled, “More of those animals!”

“Shit!” I responded.  _ Scary little...big fuckers. _ I sprinted to duck behind a boulder, with the back facing one of the mountains but still enough room for me to fit and one of those cloaking animals to take a chunk out of me.  _ At least my chances of getting shot are lower. _

“Us or them! They forced this!” Liam was right, but damn I still felt guilty.

_ We could’ve been intruding on their home, and they got scared. Here we are, fighting to the death and ruining families. _ My finger being on the trigger was almost autopilot at this point. The lightning struck one of the wounded aliens down. Liam had joined me behind the rock.

“They’re trying to surround us! Keep eyes on your six!”  _ If I sounded like I knew what I was doing, would that help? _

“And our two o’clock...and our eight…” Liam responded.  _ Nope. _

“And everything in between, let’s be honest.” My aim was off more than before. I could tell I was getting tired, I was out of breath and every muscle in my body did not want to move.  _ Too bad, Sara. Get up. I can’t… But you have to, no choice. You give up now, you let down literally everyone. What would your father do? How would Scott react to you giving up? I’m not built for this! Then, stop shooting and use your damn biotics and tech!  _ Internal thoughts always fought. Need versus want. Irrational versus rational. Logic versus emotion.

“Now who’s dead, asshole!” Liam shouted.  _ How can he handle death so easily? _ Liam threw out about half of his grenades in this fight, while I had stayed behind the rock still trying to shoot. I had tried to use my biotics, but they made the headache worse and the ringing in my ears intensify. I had let excuses win this fight. Liam threw one last grenade that finished off the last of them, the lightning and fire wasn’t in their favor. “There. We’ve got them all.” I rested up against the rock, limbs limp and breathing heavy. Sweat burned my eyes, and caused the sides of my nose to itch, and the frustration of not being able to itch it through my helmet. Everything was shaking. Liam kneeled beside me, “Hey, we got them all.”

“Yeah.” My voice hoarse. Many things were not in my favor. I have hyperthyroidism, and all I had today was a cup of water, and I’ve had extraneous activity for about six hours, how long until my body decides to start eating my fat and muscles for energy?  _ Excuses, Sara! Excuses! People are fighting through worse conditions! But they are trained! You think starving kids are trained to starve? No? Get up, damnit! _

Liam looked over me. “Were you hit?”

“No.” I looked through the condensation inside my helmet as it fogged up with my own heat.

“Shit.” Liam muttered. “Stay here. I’ll go scavenge around for something. You look like hell.” He stood up and went to the crash.

_ Great, now you have him babying you. I can’t get up! Are your legs broken? No? Then you can stand up and move. _ I rolled around trying to get up but my muscles shook too much and everything felt dizzy.  _ I can’t! You can! _ I tried again, but couldn’t support my weight which landed me aggressively back against the rock.  _ Weak. Damnit, Sara, stop feeling sorry for yourself! I’m not a machine! The human body can achieve many things that can make a krogan do a double-take! Get up! _ Those last two words pounded against my head in time with the throbbing.  _ Water...I need water. _ Soon, that was the only thing being said in my head. I was about to roll over and start crawling when Liam rushed back, sealed water in his hands.

“I found some medigel, provisions, water, and other things. This will be tricky.” He took a moment to think as I slowly sat back up. “Hold your breath and take off your helmet, then sip the water as long as you can. Put back on the helmet and take a few slow breaths. Take it slow. You drink too fast, you throw up. Hold your breath, breathe too fast, or the toxic air, then you pass out.” He instructed as he carefully opened the can. “Mineral water. Tastes like shit, but full of vitamins.” He held the can, “I’ll help and try to keep a lookout. Don’t die on me, Ryder.” I silently followed his instructions, I didn’t take the helmet all the way off when I drank just in case. The water tasted sour and bitter, like someone took vitamin tablets and crushed them then mixed it into the water. Liam had to constantly remind me to not drink too fast because it was hard not to. After the can was finished, he sat by and did the same thing with another can. He needed water, too.

After a few moments, I did start to feel much better. Still, shaking a bit, but that could be from a number of different things. “Thank you.” 

Liam was also relaxing up against the rock. “It’s not a problem. I hope to hell that the rest are doing okay.” He shifted to stand back up. “I saw some fresh footprints, like our boots, leading from the crash. One person, probably Greer. Though the grass covered up which direction he went. But, this means we’re close.”

It took me a good minute to get back onto my feet. “Then we should continue onwards.”

Liam nodded, “Right. Oh, and I packed some of the stuff into my belt packs. How long do you think it’s been since we saw those flares?”

“About a couple of hours, I’d say.” I looked over the rock and saw two paths once again. I pointed to a weird formation off in the distance. “Hey, it looks like a building over there.”

Liam followed my finger. “Yeah, it does. Good place for an ambush or Greer.”

“Or both.” I took a deep breath. “It’s away from lightning, I’d say we take our chances.” We dodged lightning to get to the entrance. The building went inside of the mountain, and was a dark green metal, it seemed to mirror the technology of the aliens we were fighting. Inside was dark, no movement. There was some kind of platform or courtyard out in the front, lightning struck often and fast around it, unknown alloys scattered around. Seemed to be a place that a pole would stick out of. “This place is taking a beating from the storms.”

Liam inspected the entrance of the building. “Along with everything else on this planet.”

I came up from the scan I was doing. “This could be a lightning rod of some kind. No idea on how to get it working. Maybe something inside?”

Liam motioned me over. “I’m not getting readings from inside. No movement, or at least anything with a heartbeat. Seems deserted.” The door was open, and the inside was a circular layout. Again, dark green metal, seemed quite clean despite the color. Crates littered the place, abandoned in a hurry more than likely. We had on our helmet lights to see properly. “Well, I hope no one is home.”

“Looks more like a facility rather than a home.” I corrected him.  _ Circular designs, bubbled objects, everything is rounded, most everything is the same dark green color. Spacious, clean, nothing rusted. Even the omni-tool says things are quite sanitary. I could use the floor as a dinner plate. _ On top of a corner table, well, ‘corner’ table, there seemed to be lab equipment. A processor or scanner of some kind, vials, syringes, testing equipment. It looked slightly different from what I was used to seeing in a lab, but whatever works. There was even goggles on top of the processor.  _ Well, at least they care about safety. _ Thick, long tubes or wires were scattered on the ground, leading from one wall to another. “They probably left in a hurry, doesn’t make sense to keep a place sanitized just to leave things scattered around.” We followed one of the wires to a slightly caved in room.

“Yeah. No one’s living here.” Liam concluded. “Doesn’t look like the other structures we’ve seen. Different design.”

“Yeah. Maybe it belongs to the hostile aliens? Same design type as their shuttle and guns.” I continued searching around to try and get ideas.

“Think they know about a light switch?”

I half ignored him as I followed the room. It lead to a hallway and a door, the hallway continued on around the room, there was a mirror into the room it lead to in this one. The door on the other hand was shut. “That’s not going to open with the force we have.” I concluded. “Needs power to open.” That was familiar, the doors on the Citadel and most homes and ships worked the same way, except there was usually a backup. In fact, being inside of a building, though dark and ominous, was comforting. Being surrounded by four walls activated a sense of security within me.

Liam knocked on the door. “I wonder what’s inside.” The door was too thick to hear an echo.

I had my nose in my scanner as I walked around the room to do a double check before moving in deeper. There was some sort of console with an unknown function, it wouldn’t anyways because of the lack of power. “Hmm...who knows? Let’s call it a weird alien machine.”

“We sure could use SAM right now. This entire place would classify as a weird alien machine.” Liam ran his fingers along the wall. “You weren’t kidding about the sanitation, I don’t even see dust.”

I collected some odd material and stuck it in my pockets. Looked like scanners of all different kinds, though none of them worked.  _ This is what happens when you rely on power and tech too much. _ Along the walls leading into the hallway, there was huge pods of some kind, or maybe not pods, but it looked like it had stairs leading upwards.  _ Maybe not just a weird alien machine, but a weird alien throne. _ I huffed in amusement. Before the hallway turned, there was a desk and another machine of some kind connected to the wall and the ground. Scanner had no idea what it did. “Another weird alien machine.” I concluded. I didn’t look at the desk just yet, I would come back later. In the room the hallway lead to was just packed with machines of all different types and probably functions, but I had no idea what.

“I wonder what all of this is about?” Liam questioned. One machine was almost flat up against the wall, and it had a vent at the bottom, of course nothing here was flat, bubbly and curvy more like. 

I tried to activate it. “Nothing.”  _ Power, dipshit _ . 

There were a few more desks in this room, one of which seemed to have an audio log.  _ Please don’t need power, not like we can understand what they’re saying, but still. _ I activated it. “Zev gosad! Surnahd zot.” It played. The voice was clear, but a bit hoarse. It sounded more like an alert or a command. The voice almost sounded worried.

“Same language as the aliens.” I concluded. “I wonder what he’s saying?”

“Kill all humans, probably.” Liam responded sarcastically.  _ I don’t think they have a word for human. _

I scanned another console of some kind, tried to activate it but no power. Then scanned a machine that was just the same as what was out in the hallway, tried to activate it but it didn’t do anything. Scanned another machine that looked like a tower microscope that would use two eyes, tried to activate it and nothing happened. There was a huge machine in the middle of the room. “You guessed it. Another weird alien machine.” I sighed and looked around it.

Liam chuckled, “Figures.”

I saw some sort of console on it, but it seemed to be working. “Only one way to find out…”

Liam looked over at me, “You mean, you’re gonna try to turn it on?”

I pulled out my omni-tool to try and activate it “There are large cables connected to it.” A loud shift echoed in the room.

Liam backed up. “What are you doing, Ryder?”

Whatever it was, it was powering up or about to explode. The sound it made was unnerving, and the lights on the console flashed erratically. “Oh shit!” We ran out of the room.

“That can’t be good!” Liam yelled as we turned the corner. Then a very loud click bellowed throughout the place and suddenly, lights. My eyes were definitely surprised and burning from the brightness. “Oh.” We both stopped.

I sighed. “So the weird alien machine was a generator.” I turned around to go back into the room.

Liam gave a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Maybe it did something more than just turn on the lights?” I inquired. 

Back in the room I poked and prodded at everything. The microscope looking thing started to spark, so I moved on. I went to the pod looking machine and poked at it. It let out some sort of gas or steam. “Weird.” I commented.

“If that’s poison, I know who to blame.” Liam stared.

I looked back at him. “We have our own oxygen and helmet on, Liam.” I sat on the chair next to it. “You know, the aliens don’t wear helmets. Maybe they can breathe the air?”

Liam crossed his arms. “They would kind of have to, Ryder.” I felt like facepalming.

I got up to check out more things. A console by the generator sparked a bunch. “Woah.” I backed up. “Circuit overload, maybe?”

“Even the equipment’s out to get us.” Liam said.

“See the cave in literally a meter away from us?”

“Well...yeah, but...still.” He stuttered.

Back over to the machine on the wall, I noticed where the vent is was actually just a series of wires coming out of a ledge. I used my omni-tool to activate it and it sounded off what seemed to be an alarm. Obnoxious, loud, and sounded like a heavy metal crate screeching against metal flooring every second. “Aw, crap! Fuck! Damnit!” I couldn’t plug my ears. I moved away from it, and in between the alarms I could hear Liam yelling. I kicked the machine. “Stop screaming!” It stopped. “Huh…”

Liam rushed up to me and pointed in my face. “Never do that again!”

“Trust me, I don’t plan to.” I sighed. “That’s the sign to stop poking things.”

Liam groaned. “Agreed. Hey, maybe that door is open?”

Sure enough, when we got back the door was opened. It had looked like they were drilling into the mountain, and lots of equipment. “Some kind of research lab?” I said as I approached the table by the entrance.

“Maybe.” He started, “Then it got hit by a tornado. Or…cave in.”

There was a crate on the table similar to what held the thing on my back. Dark metal with blue lining. It was obvious these aliens were studying it. There was some sort of terminal next to it. “Hmm...another audio log?” I said as I activated it.

“Keng zhef. Rol no tod surhanad. Jhan lurok.” I was right, but no idea what it said. A lot calmer than the last one, probably just a simple research log entry.

“Not exactly poetry, is it?” I said. I felt bad, but it sounded so...rough? Mean. It would not be a romantic language by human standards that’s for sure.  _ Racist are we? _ There’s the guilt. The floor in some areas resembled the architecture of the tech that the aliens seemed to be studying, and it lead up to a door, trapezoid in shape. Kind of a downward slope to it, and littered with crates, rocks, debris, and wires or tubes of some kind from the species studying it.

Liam stopped behind me. “Weird. You hear that?”

“Yeah.” A very low hum emminated before us, I could feel the vibration through my boots. “Looks like they were trying to excavate or tunnel in.” I walked slowly forward.

“Don’t think it turned out so well.” Liam followed. Unlike the other doors we saw similar to this, this one seemed active. It had blue lights dotting where it would open, it seemed to open vertically like some of our doors instead of horizontally like the aliens studying this place. But there was a vertical slit, so maybe? Maybe it opened diagonally in four parts? A noise sounded, similar to the squished skittle-like robot noise from before. A machine woke up and stood up, clanking with the metal. It was similar in design, but this one walked on two legs, similar to that of a dog’s back legs, and looked less like a skittle. From its legs was its ‘head’ and two antennae looking things. Maybe a source for solar power, because they were flat horizontally and stuck straight up. “Watch it!” Liam yelled as he took out his gun.

The machine turned around making weird noises and started firing, the bullets resembled pulse lasers and were blue. “What is it?” I asked as I put up a biotic field to protect myself and Liam.

“Pissed?” Liam responded as he threw a grenade at it. The blast made it break apart and pieces flew everywhere. “There!”

I released my field, “Now killer robots. Ugh.” I groaned.

Liam chuckled. “The geth back home would just love this place.” 

_ Time to scan the place. _ I scanned the robot. “Doesn’t say much, other than it’s not organic. Old, though, like centuries old. Same as the doors.”

“Automated guard?” Liam asked.

“Maybe. But you think it would attack the other aliens as well?”

“Maybe they found a way to pacify them? Work on their side, kind of a thing. Where are the creators of these?” Liam asked great questions.

“There’s a body of the hostile aliens we’ve been fighting over here.” I scanned the body. “Wounds are from an energy blast. More than likely had a fight with our robot friend over there. I don’t think they were able to pacify. Maybe they had to give up this facility because of the robots or whatever is behind the door...hell, maybe the weather.”

“What were they doing?” Liam asked rhetorically.

I kept my scanner out and went over the door.  _ Data: Sealed enclosure. DANGER: High energy levels detected! SAM currently offline. _ “Some serious energy on the other side of this door. I think it’s best to keep it closed for now.”

“Closed for that reason, probably.”

“Looking at the cave in, the body. These guys were poking around where they shouldn’t have been.” Near the door seemed to be a sort of console, it looked like it had hexagonal shapes all around the middle, maybe like keys, but they were all retracted. The scanner showed:  _ Data: Possible access console. Inoperable. High energy residue detected. SAM currently offline. _ “It’s fried. Could be a console, maybe for the door?”

“Hey, what about that thing you found? It’s on your back.” Liam pointed.

I quickly took it off, it fit perfectly on the console. “You’re right. But, the little buttons on the console need to be raised somehow for this to work.” I put the object back onto my back. “It would be wonderful to study this.”

I saw Liam smile through the helmet. “Sweet! Mystery! We gotta get out of here first, you know.”

I nodded. “I know.” It was nice to feel like we were getting somewhere, even if it wasn’t off planet. I turned around to find another oddly shaped machine of some kind. Red lights, again dark shiny metal, and triangular in shape. More of a kind of boomerang. Scan revealed:  _ Data: Unknown artifact. Age: 300 to 400 years (approximate). Other: Advanced technological fabrication and design. SAM currently offline. _ “Again, whatever this is, it scans as being old. Centuries old. This technology seems far ahead of ours, and the aliens we are fighting.”

“Would SAM give more information?”

“Yeah. If I had the equipment to study this, we wouldn’t need SAM. But SAM would make this easier and faster.” I did a look around the room to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. “Older than this lab. But around the same age as the bot we killed, the door, and that console over there.”

“So maybe these aliens found it deeper in? Like an artifact?”

I pursed my lips and nodded. “Exactly. It’s what the scanner called this...machine. I don’t think they were at war. The creators might’ve just disappeared. Similar to the Protheans maybe? These aliens are just trying to study it. We have more things in common between our galaxies than I first thought.” There was also something attached to the door, connected by thick green wires to the other equipment here. “Looks like they were going to try and pry the door open. Or use explosives.” I frowned. “Not ideal.”

“Do they know what they’re doing?” Liam asked.

I shook my head. “Better not be trying to explode this place to get further in. If you can’t open one door, how can you open more? One would have to figure out the first step before continuing.”

“Maybe they just got frustrated?”

“Not an excuse to sacrifice artifacts. Or even lives. Hell, it might’ve caused the cave in because they tried explosives. Patience would be better here.” I backed up and sighed. I made a humming noise as I left the room.

We were back near the entrance of the facility, the door behind us closed but we were able to open it again with our omni-tools. I placed my hands on my hips and furrowed my brows then started to pace the room. “Any theories, Recon Specialist?” Liam inquired.

It took me a moment to respond. “There’s some kind of technology on this planet. Older and underground. Something these aliens are very interested in. Almost frantically.”

“Like archeologists? Impatient ones?”

A cold feeling flooded my body.  _ Impatient. Quite hostile. _ “Yeah. Bloodthirsty ones.” Suddenly, this room didn’t feel so safe or comforting. I looked around the room once more.  _ Impatient, hostile, intelligent. _ I ran my gloved fingers over what used to be a counter.  _ Extremely sanitary. Experimental. They tried to take blood samples from one of our own. But are they scared or hostile? As scientists they would want to learn more, but maybe they don’t like the peaceful approach. Even though proven to be more effective than hostile approach, as it limits destruction. _ “These aliens have no idea what they’re doing. They seem just as blind as we are.” I concluded. I shook my head, “Let’s get back out there. This place is unnerving.”

“I agree.” Liam followed me out. “Weather is still crappy.” I stopped him at the doorway. “What?”

I pointed out. “Remember those lightning rods?” He nodded. “They weren’t functioning when we entered in earlier. They also didn’t have rods.”

“Shit.” He grabbed his gun. “Good eyes.” We ran to cover behind the crates and heard feet moving. It was the aliens, surprise surprise. “Heads up, they were waiting on us!”

My eyes widened as one of the cloaked animals came sprinting towards me. “Oh, damn!” I used my jet to push myself back and dodge the attack. The initial bite was avoided, but the creature pursued me. I shocked it multiple times with my omni-tool, butted it with my rifle as I got cornered. Even point blank shooting. Liam caught its attention.

“Are these things stalking us?”

“Sure as hell feels like it!” I started to shoot it in the butt, which was one of the only places not armored.

The creature still pursued.  _ This is not fucking natural. _ It got on top of Liam and I rushed out about to use some biotics to try and throw it off, when Liam yelled, “This is not how I go out!” And shot under its chin which made it go limp finally.

I noticed that the aliens were closing in on us. “I don’t think they’re listening!” Radar showed only two left. I used a mix of gun and omni-tool shocking to stun them, as Liam had better aim than I did and with them stunned he was able to get clear shots. Though one got up behind me and hit the back of my head. I feel to my knees and dropped my gun, my head in piercing pain. I saw Liam’s feet before me and the vibration of a thud next to me. Even with my helmet, that was an extremely hard hit.

Liam helped me up. “We’re all clear.” He said. “You need medigel?”

“No. I need an Aspirin and a concussion check.” I tried to rub the back of my neck, the armor would not allow satisfaction.

Liam picked up my gun and handed it to me. “I don’t think we should wait around for more, Ryder.” I agreed.

We moved up to where the lightning rods are, and I couldn’t help myself from scanning it again, though moving my head in any direction hurt like hell. “It’s what it looks like. Defends against lightning.” Up ahead there were two pathways, up and down pretty much.

“Path down to the right maybe?” Liam suggested. I shrugged and went down, we were nearing the location of the flares at least. There was some radio static that caught our attention. “You hear that?”

“Yeah. Radio static. But it’s a pattern.” I walked down the path slowly concentrating on the pattern.  _ Short, short, short...long, long, long...short, short, short… Three dots, three lines, three dots. Morse code… SOS. _ “It’s an SOS.” As I walked down the path, the static got louder and louder. It lead into a nearby cave. “In here.” I whispered.

Soon I could hear a distant voice. “What do you want?” Human voice, terrified. Liam and I drew our weapons.

“Nyro rekhet!” The responder was an alien.

“I don’t understand you! I’m from the Milky Way!” That’s when Liam and I charged in. It was Greer’s voice.

A watch spotted us and screamed, “Tolerad!” then opened fire.

Greer shouted for help, I had to duck into cover because they took out my shields almost instantly. “Hang on, Greer!” I yelled back. “We’ve got you!”  _ More like Liam’s got you, but still. _

“Keep your head down!” Liam instructed as he threw a grenade. “Setting a kill-zone! They’re  _ not _ getting out of this!” Liam charged in to finish them off. I was able to get a couple shots into one, but at a distance I was more or less shooting the rock they were hiding behind. “We’re clear!”

Greer came out of hiding. “Careful where you step. They seemed to spill some sort of toxic sludge over there.” His hand were on his knees and he was shaking and out of breath. “Thank god. I was tapping my mic hoping someone would notice.”

I rushed over, careful of the sludge. “I heard. Are you okay?” I scanned over him.

“Yeah.” Greer swallowed. “Where are the others?”

I responded, “They killed Kirkland. But Fisher’s alive back at the main crash site.”

Liam added, “He’s got a broken leg. Needs help.”

Greer took a deep breath. “I’ll check around for supplies, then I’ll head back.”

I finished the scan, he was fine thankfully. “Stay put when you get there.” I instructed. “We’ll look for my dad’s shuttle.”

“Good luck. I can’t wait to get off this hell rock.” Greer stayed behind as Liam and I continued on.

We approached an odd place, seemed like a small battle ground with the placement of the crates, and there was a circular door that was attached to the mountain. Looking around, I realized that we just walked in a huge circle because nearby was the crashed shuttle and the cave with the plants. I stopped in annoyance and popped my neck. “Liam.”

“Yeah?”

“We just came back around to that cave that we found about four hours earlier.” Before Liam could respond, a deafening alarm sounded, similar to the alarm in the lab except about a trillion times louder. The circular door opened and a few aliens came rushing out. “Oh, fuck. That cannot be good.”

Liam pulled me down behind cover. “No shit.” He opened fire. “Looks like a patrol! Probably the assholes that took Greer!” I gave out some shocks and biotic throws. The biotics were a bit hard to do due to my mental and physical state, but I was getting somewhat used to the hell I was thrown into. Or, really, pretending to be used to it. Liam threw the last of his grenades into the group, which promptly finished them off...everywhere. “There. Ran out of grenades, but they’re finished.”

My mouth was wide open and so were my eyes. “You did that so easily?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Tired of those assholes.”

I wasn’t in awe, but I was definitely shocked by his move. At least the alarms stopped. I slowly got up, felt both my knees and hips pop as I stood. Curiosity got the best of me and I entered the huge circular door, which promptly lead to another one. I shook my head. “No way in here.”

“Good thing, too. We aren’t equipped for a big fight.” Liam responded. We were both frustrated and tired, no doubt about that. “Do we know where we’re going?”

“We found Greer. And the flares went off not to far from here.”

“Since we basically went in a big circle, we could’ve found Greer sooner and maybe even your dad’s shuttle?” He lead out a frustrated sigh.

“Trust me, I’m just as annoyed. There’s only one path left and it’s back up that way where Greer was. Think Dad and the squad he took would’ve gone up to higher ground, which is where that path leads.” I hoped. 

The tension was high, the choice to stay silent as we trekked back to take the other path was a wonderful choice. The pain from my body was ceased to a numbing sensation, my body felt damp from marinating in my own sweat for hours. Eyes were a bit swollen and generally puffy due to irritation and complete tiredness. My ears rang, but I could hear my internal heart beat. My synesthesia was numb, too. Colors didn’t sing, and noises didn’t paint, hell, I was too tired to even have thoughts. Most of the walk I don’t even remember.

“SOS on frequency 154.3. Anyone here?” A woman’s voice sounded through my comm. Staticy, but understandable. It was Cora.

I stopped, my heart beating in excitement. “Cora, we read you. You’re alive!”

“Shuttle repairs are underway, but we’re surrounded! Sending navpoint.” Cora responded. I got the notification soon after.

“They’re not friendly. We’re on our way!” I punched the navpoint into my omni-tool. “Navpoint marked!”  _ Cora means that Dad is nearby. Family. Familiarity. Maybe a hug? No, Dad wouldn’t give a hug until we were off planet. _ The nav showed that they were simply up the hill. Ignoring my growing frustration with myself, Liam and I sprinted upwards to the little camp they had going on next to their shuttle, which was in one piece. They were already fighting the aliens. I couldn’t see my dad anywhere, but I did see Cora, Heyes, and Carlyle. Liam and I had no trouble ducking behind cover and giving them supporting fire.

“Let’s do this!” Liam exclaimed. “Cora, we’ve got your back!”

“They’re trying to pin us down!” She responded. They all seemed to be in strategic places.

“They’re doing a good job at it, too!” Heyes retorted.

“Light ‘em up, Ryder!” Liam said, a bit enthusiastically. I did, with a shock rather than my gun. That gave the rest of the team a better shot at them.

“On it!” I responded in a more frustrated tone that I would’ve liked it to be.

“Pick your targets!” Cora instructed.

“Hah!” I gave a laugh, “Plenty of those!” I alternated between using my biotics to throw some against the rock walls, and stunning them with some shocks.  _ I should really upgrade my omni-tool, I seem to be using it a lot. Maybe I could give it a bigger punch… _

“I’ve got one!” Carlyle happily said. Liam gave them hell with his gun, so did Cora and Heyes, but Heyes had grenades that she used when the aliens started to group up. Carlyle was guarding the medical equipment, but shot a few times.

I heard the sound of a shield breaking and Heyes grunted. “What did we ever do to them?”

Cora grabbed Heyes to keep her down. “Exist, apparently.” I responded. Once in a good while I would use my gun, running low on ammo for it.

Liam gave a warning, “Careful, they fight dirty.” One grunt from Heyes later and the last alien on the field exploded.  _ Damn I hate that. _ Liam stood up. “Well...that settles that.”

Carlyle came up to us and gave us a quick scan. “Cavalry to the rescue. Nice to see you guys. We were safe for a few hours there, working on the shuttle. She’s almost up and running.”

I let him scan me. For once it was nice to not have to scan everything. “It’s nice to see you guys, too. How’s everyone doing?”

“Still in one piece.” Cora approached with a smile. “You got here just in time. Give or take a few hours and we would’ve been out looking for you.”

I took a minute to catch my breath. “What happened to my dad?”

No look of sorrow on anyone’s faces, so that’s good. “He went scouting ahead.” Cora responded. “Told us to stay and fix the shuttle. Ryder, Kosta, there’s weapons and ammo over there.” She pointed to a crate by the shuttle. “Stock up. And take off your load, seems you brought something.”

Liam dove first into the stockpile while I placed my device in the shuttle. “Yeah. A key of some kind. Works with some ancient tech we found.” I looked back at Cora, “Did the aliens try and talk to you guys at all?”

She shook her head. “Barely a word, then started shooting. You?”

“Same thing. We tried to be nice, multiple times. Doesn’t seem like they wanted to play along.” I headed over to restock on ammo.  _ Not like I’ve been using my guns that much, but better safe than sorry. _

I could hear a large engine nearby. Heyes looked up. “Ah hell. Enemy shuttle approaching!”

Everyone took out their guns, Cora motioned us all to cover. “Get to cover. Go, go!” I hid behind a rock, it seemed that they had put up tech around the shuttle in the past hours to get a better read on the place. The alien shuttle overhead was huge, similar to the crashed one we saw earlier. “Here they come!” Cora warned as the aliens jumped out of their transport. It was an odd design, like a bubbly rectangle of some kind.

Lightning struck nearby. “They’ve got balls to try an airdrop in this weather!” Liam shouted.

Open fire almost immediately. “Don’t let up!” Cora ordered. Dad made her second in command a long time ago, he even taught her many things while he was an N7. This information was in the dossier about her that Scott and I were able to read. The shuttle started to fly away, but got a major hit by lightning and lost control. It crashed into the mountain in a fiery explosion. The sound boomed from the area then the ground under our feet vibrated. The explosion itself did take out a few of the aliens that dropped, so that’s good. Carlyle laughed, “Hah! Lightning zapped their shuttle!” _ Hearing a doctor laugh like that is really fucking creepy. _

I poked out of cover to get an idea of where everyone was and was met with bullets. My shields taking the hit made it hard to see what was happening. Cora called out, “You guys okay?”

“Not dead yet!” Carlyle responded.  _ He is having way too much fun with this. _ I mostly just stayed down and shocked a few once in a while when I saw them out of the corner of my eye. 

“Since when do rocks float?” Heyes frustratingly said.

I looked over at her and responded, “Since now apparently. Just go with it, it’ll be fine.” One of the aliens had grenades of their own, thankfully overshot my position, but I got covered in dirt and I felt some rocks get into thin parts of my suit.  _ They really don’t make these things for combat. _

“Heads up!” Liam shouted. “Another shuttle incoming!”

“Fuck me!” I responded. “In this weather?”

Cora moved position. “Guess we got their attention.”

So did Heyes. “Are those  _ dogs _ ?”

I gave a nervous laugh. “Oh boy, I wish. They have some weird cloaking ability.”

“You’re shitting me!” Heyes wished.

“I wish I was.”  _ Wish, wish, wish...when you wish upon a star- be careful what you wish for because you might end up in hell. That didn’t rhyme...oh fu- _ I dodged the cloaked animal as it tried to lunge at me.

“Sound off!” Cora checked in.

Carlyle was first. “I’m here!”

I responded next, “Surprisingly still alive!”

“Here!” Then Liam.

Finally Heyes, “Present!”

“Ack!” I saw multiple of the dogs. “Get the dogs! They’re sneaky bastards!”

“I can’t get a bead on those things!” Carlyle was worried. I tried to shock one of them to make it easier. “Got one!” I saw things, and body parts fly all over the place. I got a couple of green blood splatters on my helmet, too. I hated it. I felt sick and started to panic again.

I wanted to release some of the panic with a biotic throw, and when I peaked over the cover I saw something different. A larger alien with a bigger gun, and their shields absorbed my biotic throw. I got their attention and they opened fire, I ducked but saw all the bullets that went flying past.  _ That fucker has a rapid fire something, never seen that before...for fucks sake, this would’ve eaten me alive! _

“There’s too many of them!” Heyes yelled as she ducked back into cover.

Cora popped back up to shoot. “Just keep firing! We can do this!” She saw the new unit on the field. “Watch out for the heavy!”

Liam dodged the bullets from the heavy. “Damn these guys know how to fight!”

I internally screamed when a grenade landed next to me. I used my jump-jet to quickly go backwards but I hit the crate behind me and as I was standing up, the blast from the grenade made me fall back over and hit the crate again. I got covered in debris, dirt, and felt sharp pains across my body.

Carlyle got hit a bit as well. “Arg! Damn shrapnel!”

Heyes saw me on the ground and dragged me back into cover. Liam yelled, “Damn! They won’t let up!”

“Just a few more left!” Cora responded. “Focus on the heavy!” Heyes, Cora, and Liam shot down the heavy in a heartbeat. Carlyle focused on one of the aliens coming in from the side and shot them down.

The last one remaining was about to flank Liam, so he responded by butting him with his gun. The alien fell over swiftly and Liam just opened fire on their face, his finger never left the trigger. He shot off the bone, skin, flesh, muscle, more bone and tissue. Cora ran over. “Liam, enough!”

He stopped and swiftly turned around. “Right, just...these assholes killed Kirkland!”

I struggled to stand up. “Understandable. But, Liam...don’t waste ammo. This also won’t bring him back.” I faced him.

He turned around and pumped a few more rounds into the corpse. “Now I feel better.”

Cora faced the two of us. “And what about the others? Greer? Fisher?”

I answered, “Fisher’s wounded but sitting tight. Greer’s with him. Though, our shuttle is located all over the place.”

Carlyle came almost running to us, helping Heyes walk over. She was holding her side and limping horribly. “Guys…” She struggled to speak.

Carlyle fell over with her. “She’s been hit!” Then, the ground under their feet seemed to spark. Lightning was about to strike, but they were struggling to move out of the way. Liam and I rushed over to try and help pull them back, Cora just stood in front of them and pulled up a biotic shield over us. 

“Hang on!” She instructed as her biotics took the heat from the lightning. It looked like it stung...a lot, especially the way that she recoiled and grunted. She seemed fine, though.

Liam walked up to her. “Cool, another biotic.”

She seemed less than pleased with her response. “Don’t worry, biotics aren’t contagious.”

Liam was going to respond with something but Heyes spoke, “Before they attacked, I…” She let out a pained cough. Carlyle started scanning. “Managed to fix our comms.”

_ Dad… _ I opened my omni-tool to try and contact him. Cora kneeled down to her, “You’re a lifesaver, Heyes. Now, take it easy.” She instructed.

_ To get to Dad, one must talk to SAM… _ “SAM, are you there?” I almost yelled into the comm.

There was a flash from my omni-tool before the familiar robotic voice came over, “...QEC link established. Affirmative, Sara. The Pathfinder needs to speak with you.”

I saw my dad’s face come on the small vid screen on my omni-tool, I couldn’t help the smile that ran across my face knowing my father was alive and well. My heart sped up as he spoke. “Good to see you in one piece. What’s our status?” He seemed less than pleased, but he’s an N7. No time for reunions at a place like this.

I responded, “Liam and I are with Cora. Greer and Fisher are back at our shuttle. Kirkland didn’t make it.”

Cora also opened her comm. “We have wounded. The good news is that our shuttle has been repaired. We can get back to the Ark.”

Dad shook his head. “Not with these storms. It’s too risky to fly.”

“Our wounded can’t wait much longer. Do you have a plan?” I asked.

“If the storm’s the problem, then let’s solve the problem.” He said nonchalantly.  _ Erm… _

“Uh...we are talking about weather, Dad.”

“Yup. I have an idea. Rendezvous at my coordinates, we’ll-” He looked away from the comm screen. “Damn! Spotted me.” Comm link went down.

“Sir?” Cora sounded worried. “Sir!” She looked over at Carlyle and Heyes. “Can you two manage alone?”

Carlyle was busy tending to her wounds. “I can keep her stable.” He looked down at his scanner. “For now.”

Cora lead the way. “Let’s move.” She motioned Liam and I to start following. “SAM, do you have the Pathfinder’s position?”

SAM responded in a beat. “Marking the navpoint on your map.”

Cora took a minute to look over it. “Doesn’t look far. Let’s go. Follow me, and let’s make this quick. We have to get there before the storm hits. No detours.” She lead the way down a path.

“What was my dad scouting for?” I asked.

“Readings on that tower.” Cora pointed up where the swirling clouds were.

“Well, the navpoint puts him right by it.” Liam also looked at the map.

SAM beamed over our comms. “Exercise caution. The storm front is already gaining intensity.” I saw lightning flash like we were at a rave.  _ No kidding. _

Cora lead us down some ledges. “Use your jets to cushion your landing.”

Liam and I jumped down with her. “Nice to have you back, SAM.” I stated. “Got any good news?” No response. “Great.” We went down more ledges until we could see the circle door that Liam and I were at a while back.  _ Great… We were all running in circles. _ Lightning was fierce in this area, more so than last time. “Fuck. SAM’s right, we don’t have much time.”

Cora used her jump-jet to get across the gap and we followed suit. “Stay close to the mountain, less likely to get hit by lightning.” Then she noticed the lightning rods. “And the rods are drawing the lightning away.”

“I say we still hug the wall.” Liam suggested.

“Agreed, Kosta.” Cora ran her hand against the mountain side for stability. The lightning strikes were deafening and caused harsh ringing in my ears. We slowly approached the circle door. I noticed a lot more dead bodies here than when Liam and I were here. “Dead bodies here. Lightning didn’t do this.”

“Neither did we.” I stayed quiet as Liam answered. “This is a hell of a lot more than we took out.”

Cora did a quick scan. “Incendiary rounds. Pathfinder’s been busy. N7’s do not mess around.”

Liam stepped up to me. “Hey since SAM’s back online, you could probably do a thorough scan.”

“Make it quick.” Cora instructed. This time there was a small summary under the analysis section.  _ Analysis: This alien is an unusual mixture of various genetic traits. There is evidence of DNA modification, but no other conclusions can be drawn at this juncture.  _ Cora motioned us to continue on before I could say anything. We grasped at the mountain for stability and safety. “Someone was pretty clever with those rods.”

“Only way to survive here.” I probably yelled a bit, my hearing was severely off and everything sounded muted.

“Two.” Liam added. “If you count shooting on sight.”

We approached a small ledge, it was too soon for the cave, but it lead to a cliff. “We’re close.” Cora confirmed. “Navpoint says the Pathfinder’s up here.” Liam and I followed Cora up the ledge. The ground was covered in the platform type material that lead us across the chasm earlier. Sure enough, my dad was up here and crouched down. “Sir!” Cora approached.

Dad quickly turned around and motioned us to duck. “Stay low.” He ordered. All four of us crawled to the edge of the ledge. We could see a giant shield surrounding what seemed to lead up to the tower. Guards surrounded the shield and patrolled. It seemed the aliens set up a base here and had to build bridges to get to the tower. Lightning struck harshly around the shields at the rods.

Cora whispered, “Who  _ are _ those guys?”

Dad answered promptly, “Visitors. Just like us. I don’t think they’re native to this planet.”

“They’re not.” I helped him to conclude. “We found an abandoned lab. Looked like they’ve been studying the place.”

He looked at me. “Good work. You actually did some scouting.” His eyes went back to the field before us.

_ Was he not expecting me to explore? Isn’t that what we came here for? Adventure and exploration? Or is he still pissy that his daughter didn’t join the Alliance. _ “It’s why we came all this way to Andromeda, isn’t it? Exploring the unknown, you said.” I might’ve sounded a bit hurt.

“Glad that sunk in.” He was always good at being monotone. “Because some days, it’s easy to forget.”

I grunted at the pain I felt pulsing throughout my body. “Tell me about it…” I muttered, hoping he wouldn’t hear.

Cora inched forward. “Sir? You said something about the weather?”

He gave a small nod. “It’s the dark energy cloud the Hyperion hit. It’s affecting the whole planet. Interfering with what.” He pointed at the tower, and damn did the tower look huge, even from this distance.

SAM chimed in, “The tower is caught in a feedback loop with the cloud. Together, they’re disrupting the entire climate with undirected energy.” From the tower, it seemed to have a reverse lightning effect as it pumped energy into the cloud swirling overhead. The cloud seemed to be more of an electric blue than anything, and each time the tower let out more energy, the cloud seemed to let out a huge electric pulse that shook the planet with a loud boom.

“Well,” I began, “that would explain the cave we found. It had a ton of plants sheltered from the storm...or that tower.”

“It’s a good bet.” Dad agreed. “And I think if we can get in there and shut that tower down…”

“The storm goes away.” Liam finished.

“And the shuttle can get us out of here.” Dad continued. “In theory. We just have to get passed them.” He pointed at the patrols.

_ I need to get off this planet… _ “I say we won’t know until we try. We either get killed by the elements or the aliens.” I said.

“No illusions about this. It’ll be a nasty fight the whole way.” Dad warned us.

Cora looked at me. “If Sara’s game. Then so am I.”  _ I’m glad someone puts faith into my decision, because I sure as hell don’t. _ She looked back at Dad. “But we risk turning a skirmish with these guys into something worse.”

Dad shrugged. “It’s them or us.”

Liam chuckled. “Oh, it’s them. Problem is we’re outnumbered.”

Dad opened his omni-tool. “Oh, I’ve been working on that.” His hand hovered over the hologram around his arm. “We just need to change the numbers.” He waited until a patrol stopped moving and then tapped the omni-tool. Seconds later, all of the lightning rods in the surrounding area exploded and the explosion took out a few of the enemies. My eyes widened at such a drastic move, needed, but drastic. Harsh lightning struck the shield generators and the shield went down. Dad stood up and used his jump-jet to get off the ledge. My heart started racing again, I’m not ready.

Liam shrugged, “Works for me.” He followed directly after. Cora went after. I shook my head and shakily followed.  _ Why didn’t I stay behind, again? Right, because i was worried about Dad, like he couldn’t handle himself. _

Liam and Cora stated that we were right behind Dad. He just ran. There was no stopping, we were charging straight in. “Push ahead to the tower!” He instructed. “SAM, load combat profile.” Then the way he fought changed. He threw grenades, set up assault turrets, and lit up the field like a krogan. Cora, Liam, and I could barely get in a shot, if any.

“We’ve gotten their attention!” Liam stated.

“Watch the lightning!” Cora warned. My mind was just racing, and I stayed as close to Dad as I could.

He used his jump-jet to fly up onto the platform. “Get into the building! We don’t want to get bogged down out here!” I followed him up, and so did the rest of us. There were a few buildings that lead up to the tower, and there was a lot of guards.

I used my biotics to throw some of the aliens off the side of the ramp, and my omni-tool to shock a few so Dad could finish them off. “This went south quickly!”

Dad placed another turret and grenades. “Go, go, go!” He sprinted up another ramp and we followed as fast as we could. We reached another platform, explosions happened all around us from both sides and the lightning. “SAM, load biotic amp interface mode.” His tactics changed again. He held up a biotic shield and rammed the aliens on the ramp after the platform, throwing them off and down the mountain. “Keep the momentum up! Don’t let them get the drop on you!” His kinetic barrier was strong enough to put out a fire that he just ran past.

“We gotta keep an eye on our flank!” Liam stated.

“Not if we keep moving forward!” Dad responded. “Don’t let them catch up! Keep up!”

We were trying, but he moved so damn fast. We all met at the entrance to what seemed to be the main building. He asked if we were ready and opened the door. The place was crawling with aliens and packed to the brim with crates and science type equipment. Animals were displayed on tables like some sort of lab experiment. It also looked like they found Kirkland and were dissecting him. Dad charged in without a second thought, telling me specifically to look away.

“How’s your dad doing all of this? He’s like a machine!” Liam asked.

“No clue!” I responded, trying my best to look away from the grim sight. Something told me that I should be thankful I couldn’t smell the room because of my helmet. “He is an N7!”

Cora mostly used her biotics, Liam, his grenades. Me? My omni-tool and biotics. Dad laughed. “That’s it! We’re doing it! Not much farther!”

“Where are we going?” My breathing was heavy, and I seemed to be tripping on air.

“All the way to the top!” He responded as he used his jump-jet to climb up crates to get to the second floor of the facility through a hole.

I struggled. “And then what?”

“SAM, give me engineer profile.” And now he was shocking the aliens, and he had a field around him that shocked anything that stood in it. He lead us onto a ramp that seemed to lead to the entrance of the tower.

“Sir,” Cora started, “where are you getting these profiles?”

“Just a little help from SAM.” He responded.

“What does that mean?” I yelled, I was frustratingly confused.

“Just focus on the fight!” He lead us to the door. There was a console in front of the door that didn’t match the aliens we were fighting, and the area in front didn’t offer much cover at all.

“Storm’s getting worse!” Cora warned.

“We lose our chance if we don’t beat it. C’mon!” Dad commanded. He bunkered down behind the console. “This looks like the control center. Keep them off my back.”

“You heard him!” Cora said. Liam, Cora, and I took position the best we could in this area. Directly in front of the door was down the mountain, to the left and right of us was ramps that lead to where the aliens were coming from.

Liam gave off a laugh. “We made it in one piece!” There was a break in the fight.

“It’s not over yet.” Dad corrected, he was nose deep in his omni-tool. “I still gotta get this door open.”

I placed my hands on my legs and tried to catch my breath. “What now?”

“I need to decipher the language.” Dad responded. I approached where he was standing, the console was exactly the same as the one the aliens were studying in the lab.  _ If only I brought that device… _

Cora rushed over. “There’s more coming!”

Liam followed. “What’s the plan here? They’ll surround us in no time!”

“We need to defend both sides.” Cora suggested. “They’ll flank us otherwise.”

“Where do you want us?” Liam asked.

There was a good spot on both sides to hold off the enemies. “Liam, you take the left.” Liam quickly ran over to the spot. “I’ll take the right. Sara, stay by your dad and make sure nothing gets to him!” Cora ran over to her spot and I stayed close to my dad. I had no problems being the backup in this situation. “We held them off at the shuttle, we can do it again!”

“Lotta people still counting on us!” I reminded bleakly.

Liam chuckled. “I’m just getting warmed up!”

It didn’t take long for fire to happen on both sides. “They mean business!” Cora warned. “Make sure they don’t get to your dad!”

_ Hegh.  _ There wasn’t anyone getting past Cora and Liam thankfully. I wanted to help both sides but the enemies were too far away for me to hit, with anything. “Analyzing possible inputs.” SAM spoke. “Twenty-five percent decrypted.”  _ Damn, it worked fast. _

“Hurry.” Dad demanded. “We don’t have much time.”

“Hold both sides!” Cora commanded. “We can’t let them slip through!”

One of the cloaked animals had sneaked past either Cora or Liam, but it was out for me. I used my biotics to throw it off the cliffside. I couldn’t help the pinge of guilt that I felt knowing that it would die a longer and painful death than if I just shot it a billion times. In fact, I felt horrible about it.

“What is this place, anyways?” Liam asked.

“No clue.” I responded. “But they’re hell-bent on getting it back!”

“SAM, update!” Dad commanded.

“Fifty-percent decrypted.” It responded.  _ Should’ve brought the thing...why didn’t you bring the thing, Sara? _ “It’s an unusually complicated syntax.”  _ Probably not if I had just taken the damn device. _

“I can see that.” Dad responded. “Try a recursive search.”

“I will need a moment to evaluate the pattern.” SAM told him.

The heat from both sides was strong, both Cora and Liam were getting overwhelmed. “We only have a moment.” Dad concluded.

“I think I pissed that one off!” I heard Liam shouting. “Maybe because I shot him in the face!”

“Really, Liam?” I questioned.  _ How long until it seems we are just as bloodthirsty as they are with that kind of talk? _

“They killed one of our own!” There was a pause as he was shooting. “And then dissected him like a lab animal!”

Because of my position, I wasn’t seeing much action, except for just being a bystander to Liam and Cora’s fighting. “Sir,” Cora spoke. “What’s your progress?”

SAM responded. “Decryption is seventy-five percent complete.”

Then Dad, “We’ve almost got it.”  _ About nine hours we’ve been on this hell planet...nine. And we are a mere fifteen percent from being off of it. _

“Just a little longer!” Cora reminded us. “They’re backing off!”

“Could be regrouping.” Liam suggested. “Should stay sharp.” There was none left.

“Decryption complete.” SAM concluded.

“That did it!” Dad rejoiced. “It’s a security override. I’ll try to open the door from here.” A moment later, “Ah damn, it’s jammed. I need to take a look at it.” Dad ran over to the door to try and pry it open. “Sara! I need your help! Over here!”

“Go! It’s okay! We’ll keep a lookout!” Cora told me. I ran over to where my dad was.

“On it!” I responded as I got to the door. It opened diagonally in four parts. Pulling up the top part seemed to be what Dad was doing to one side.

“Put your back into it!” Dad told me. We were both pulling then pushing the door open. It was an extremely heavy lift and even though my muscles were about to give out, I continued anyways.  _ My dad needed me. _ We hit what felt like was a latch and the door opened the rest of the way on its own.

“You really think we can shut this thing down?” I asked.

He responded promptly, “I don’t know yet. SAM’s decoded part of the language. Now we’ll see if I can have a conversation.”

I looked up at him like he was insane. “Nothing on this planet has listened so far. Just...be careful. Please.”

He looked back at me. “Worried about your old man, huh?” He leaned in closer. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” He smiled and walked into the room.

“I don’t care if you tell anyone.” I muttered then slowly followed him in.

Inside was a sight to behold. The room was mostly empty and there were floor lights trailing the bottom of the walls. Pillar lights that sprouted from the floor lead up to a giant hologram of the perimeter of a triangle, and the inner corners lead a small line inwards to a smaller, but full triangle in the middle. Dad stopped and looked at me. “Come on. These are the moments that make it all worthwhile.” The hologram seemed to have lines being connected to the door behind it at the three corners. Dad approached it quite quickly while I walked slower and in complete awe of the technology around me. I stayed a distance back as I watched Dad stop in front of the hologram. “SAM. Begin translating.”

“A moment.” It responded. Dad opened his omni-tool. “Indexing.” I moved closer and saw that the middle triangle seemed to have billions of these glyphs moving about, like it was trying to say something. “Translation complete.”

“Let’s see what we have.” Dad held up his omni-tool to the triangle. With a mix of his advanced omni-tool and SAM, I saw something emerge from it that I never thought would. Little dots formed around his hand and out came an orange web-like structure that reached out towards the blue triangle. After a moment, the three corners of the outer triangle lit up, and connected around the perimeter, making quite the sight. I couldn’t help the smile forming across my face, in fact my shoulders dropped and my eyes widened. I gave a small chuckle. I heard a strange noise from outside, like a fast burst of energy just went up.  _ No way… _ I turned around slowly to look outside and I didn’t hear a single flash of lightning hitting the ground. The dark clouds seemed to have parted and it was bright outside.

I walked quickly outside, my heart pounding in my chest. I was about ready to start jumping all over the place full of excitement. I could see the sun. I let out a well deserved happy laugh. “Holy fuck… Heh, it’s working!”

Dad came up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “There’s hope at least.” Liam and Cora were also staring at the sky in awe.

It was rare that I ever got to see my dad smile, and damn was he smiling now. “That’s all anyone back on the ark is looking for. That it will all work out.” We looked back up at the sky for a moment. I could start to hear a soft melody in the back of my head, similar to a lullaby. I closed my eyes and took a slow deep breath in.  _ I am here, and alive. Present in the now. _ Even through my helmet, I could feel the sun kiss my cheeks. My smile was more relaxed as I slowly opened my eyes back up.  _ I am alive. _

Dad took me out of the moment. “Well, not if we stand here looking at sunsets.” He gave a small chuckle. “Let’s get back to the shuttle and-”

There was a small rumble from behind us that quickly became louder. We both turned around to be met with a facefull of some kind of energy blast from within the tower. It sent us flying back with a huge amount of force that it knocked the wind right out of us. We slid and tumbled backwards across the platform, and we were both trying to grasp onto anything. The blast also knocked back crates and other objects hurled towards us. Dad flew past me and off the side of the cliff while I was able to grasp onto the edge of the platform with at least one hand. “Dad!” I shouted. Everything was happening so damn fast, I don’t even think my body had time to properly respond to the pain. I was about to bring my other hand over to try and get up on the platform, when some object slammed right into my helmet. I heard a shatter and I screamed in pain as my face felt like it had been bashed with a glass mace. The pain wasn’t instant, but I sure as hell felt it as I was falling backwards off the cliff. 

I tumbled all the way down, hitting everything until I was on flatter ground. I was blacked out for a moment until I woke up gasping for air. My helmet was completely shattered, and I couldn’t breathe at all. I was choking on the toxic air. I rolled over onto my hands and knees because I could feel my lungs starting to burn and my back muscles were in severe pain trying to make me breathe, faster and faster, harder and harder. My vision was blurry, everything was just in panic mode. I was grasping at the dirt beneath my hands for some sort of stability. I was choking and coughing and my body was almost trying to hyperventilate.  _ Shit..fuck… oh fuck… Help… I can’t speak! Help… Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! Help!  _ I felt tears fall down my face as my internal thoughts turned into crying gibberish.

In the distance, past the dust, I could see my dad’s omni-tool light as he limped over to me. He was holding his leg and almost dragging it. “Repeat.” I heard him in the distance. My comm was completely busted. “We need an emergency extraction,  _ now _ !” He made his way over to me and slowly kneeled down to me.

“They’re spinning up the shuttled!” I heard Cora over his comm. “ETA is three, maybe four minutes.” I was extremely dizzy and nauseous, my limbs shook like a leaf and my vision seemed almost like static. I kept forcing my eyes closed to try and blink it all out.  _ So...much...pain… _

Dad shook his head. “We don’t have that long.” He reached down and took off my helmet.  _ Wait...what is he? _ He threw it off to the side and immediately took off his own helmet.  _ No...no, no, fuck no! Dad what in the hell are you doing? _ He placed his helmet over my head and the airtight seal latched. He held my shoulders, “Deep...breaths.” He struggled to say.

My body had no problem doing what he said. Immediately, I took the biggest gasp of air that I could. My coughing continued and I felt like I was going to pass out.

“What…” I tried to speak.  _ Are _ “You...what...Dad!” I was in major pain, sobbing, and shaking. My vision was also going out.

Dad tapped into his omni-tool, and I heard SAM over the comm. “Initiating transfer.”  _ What! NO! _

My hearing went out before I could hear my dad speak. I saw him move his lips but, nothing came out. I couldn’t hear anything. Everything was turning grey. Darker. Blacker. The last thing I saw before I felt myself go limp and fall over was my dad’s pained look staring into my soul.

I went in and out of consciousness. The next thing I saw were two people standing over me. Cora said something about me going into cardiac arrest. I blacked out again.

I saw visions. Hallucinations. Monsters, my deepest fears coming for me. It was like all of my past regrets that I’ve ever made in my life was flashing back. Every moment that made me cry...every panic attack...every traumatic emotional experience I had ever had just hit me like a damn truck.

I awoke for a moment again. I was in a metal box. Carlyle was standing over me and I could see Cora’s face.  _ Pulse weakening...he said. _ “Tell the ark to prep med bay!” I heard clearly before passing back out. Lights flashed around me it felt like. My brain sent me to hell as I continued to relive traumatic experiences.  _ Worthless… useless…  _ I saw my mother die again. I was in the hospital again, I couldn’t breathe...there was vomit trapped in my lungs. Flashes. Sirens. Screaming.

I awoke again, the ceiling was moving fast. Lexi stood before me. _Pulse is dropping. We’re losing her._ A male voice said. Flashes. Blackness. Childhood. Being made constant fun of for being biotic. A friend betrays me. _This is why I went to online school._ _My teacher told me_ _I was invalid. Weak! Who cries over that?_ _Do you really think your parents truly love each other? Love doesn’t exist, child! It’s mere tolerance!_

“She’s having a seizure!” I heard Lexi. I couldn’t see her, but I reached out anyways. “Her brain cannot handle the connection!” I felt a hand force mine back down. “Get her to SAM node!”

Flashes. Blackness. Pain...all I feel is searing pain.  _ You think you’re all that special, child? You’re just one person! What in the hell could you do? _

“SAM! What’s the reading?” Lexi...again. Ceiling passing overhead. Many faces staring. Flashes.

“Sara’s implant is overloading. I suggest a hardwire connection.” SAM…

We stopped. “Do it!” Lexi again.

“There!” A male voice. Total blackness again.

_ Child, you can’t do this. You never could, Sara. _

_ I can’t…  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took 6 months to upload for many reasons, but the biggest reason was that it was a bish to write. Beginning of games or movies can usually be very repetitive and boring and I was stressing out over this chapter to the point of almost dreading to write. Got it finally done, though! And since it's uploaded and out of my way, I feel more inspired to keep up with this mega-fic. Hopefully, I keep my word this time!
> 
> Feel free to comment!


	4. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara's alive, but how? Suddenly, the reality of the situation comes crashing down, and her mentality is not in a good place to handle any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excerpt: 
> 
> ~ “Because,” I swallowed and tried to compose myself, “my brain isn’t even fully developed. I’m twenty-one, young, naive, inexperienced. Emotional, sensitive, full of stress and anxiety. I’ve never lead before, unless you count school projects. I’ve only received unofficial military training when Dad was off duty. I wasn’t trained as a Pathfinder. I’m a goddamn Recon Specialist!” Everything came out rapid-fire. “And if you know anything about the brain, by the way, human brains, hell human bodies, aren’t even done maturing and growing until fucking mid-twenties. You wanna know the part of the brain that’s in development?” I didn’t give time for anyone to answer. “The part that can make decisions based on what could happen in the future! Frontal cortex! Yeah, sure let’s put the youngest, smallest, inexperienced, weakest, most illogical, little shit in charge of what? Over 20,000 lives?” I gave a harsh chuckle. “Yeah, great fucking idea, Dad.” My breath quivered as I gasped. ~

SAM’s voice was the first thing I heard. “Welcome back, Sara.”

I slowly opened my eyes. I was in an odd room, dimly lit thankfully.  _ Am I alive? _ I struggled to sit up due to my body being overly sore. I looked around for a minute… _ small room, just a single railed pathway to the door. Familiar tech… Is this SAM node? _ I took a sharp inhale as I leaned to one side. “W… What happened?” Everything felt all sorts of fuzzy.

“You were clinically dead for twenty-two seconds.” SAM responded.

I shut my eyes in disbelief. My breathing sped up a bit due to the millions of questions trying to flood my brain. “Then how did I make it out? What happened to everyone else? Where am I? Where’s Dad?”

Liam stood up from a small nook near where I was laying. “Hey… You’re still with us.” His movements were slow as he was probably sore, too. I inched towards the end of my bed so I didn’t put too much strain on my arms holding myself up. Moving felt weird, and I felt bruised all over. “Guys,” Liam opened his comm, “get to SAM node! Ryder’s awake!” I leaned over the bed, my eyes felt heavy and puffy. All I wanted to do was sleep. “Who were you talking to, by the way?” Liam looked at me curiously. I noticed he was in his casual wear, and so was I.  _ More comfy than the armor, that’s for damn sure. _

“I was talking to SAM.” I responded, my voice hoarse and tired.

He shrugged. “I didn’t hear him.”  _ Great… I’m going crazy already. _

I heard the door slide open automatically and Lexi and Cora rushed in. Lexi wasted no time getting to scan me. “You’re up.” Cora sounded worried.

“Look here.” Lexi instructed. I only looked at her omni-tool with my eyes, my head and neck were sore as hell. She waved her hand across my field of vision. “And here.” That’s when I saw my dad’s helmet sitting on a nearby table.

I shook my head. “I need to know…what happened to my father? Where..?”

Silence.

Everyone looked away and my heart sank. A lump formed in my throat. “No…” I gasped. “No, please…”  _ He’s dead… _ No one wanted to speak. “Tell me!” My voice cracked and my lips quivered.

Cora decided she should speak. “It… It was your life or his. And he chose you.” Tears raced down my eyes and I let out an ugly sob into my hands. “I’m so sorry, Sara. I know this must be a blow.”

“No…” I denied through my cries. “We… We could’ve shared helmets! Why didn’t he…”

Lexi was the one to answer. “You had already breathed in too much of the toxic air. And you went unconscious almost as soon as your dad gave you his helmet. Also, breathing rapidly. Sharing the helmet would’ve killed one or both of you.”

I was weeping quite harshly. My pants and hands were soaked with tears, spit, and maybe even mucus. “I… I can’t believe he’s gone.” My back was already getting sore from hunching over, and I could feel the headache creeping up on me. “Everything was fine… and… and then…”

“I know he could be distant.” Cora began, and I looked up at her, covering my mouth with a pulled up sleeve in my hand. “But he once said that when his time came,” Liam placed his hand on her shoulder, “he wanted to go out among stars no one had seen before.” Her voice did crack a bit, but she couldn’t look me in the eye. No one could.

A tinge of jealousy crept in my mind.  _ She’s not even crying… I need a hug. I just need… someone. A friend?  _ I cried into my sleeve harder. I tried so hard to muffle myself, I knew the sounds were ugly and it made the room uncomfortable. “You… you might want to know why you’re here.” Liam stated. “Here in SAM node.”

_ Yeah sure, change the subject, it’s not like a piece of my heart was ripped out or anything. _ “Why?” I asked quite bitterly.  _ I’m sure this answer will totally cheer up my day. _

“SAM is now part of you…” Lexi began, “in a way we don’t entirely understand. It played havoc with your brain.” She walked over to a nearby console.

“What the hell does that mean?”  _ Being bitter isn’t going to help, Sara. I know… _

SAM spoke over the comm, I could hear the echo it made in the room, “Your father authorized the transfer of Pathfinder authority to you.”

I looked up for a moment. “What? No… That should be Cora.”

“In theory.” Cora looked at me, still standing up straight with her hands behind her back. “In reality… You’re the new Pathfinder, Sara.”

I cried even harder, which I didn’t know was possible at this point. “Why… why would he do that?”

“Why question him?” Liam asked.

“Because,” I swallowed and tried to compose myself, “my brain isn’t even fully developed. I’m twenty-one, young, naive, inexperienced. Emotional, sensitive, full of stress and anxiety. I’ve never lead before, unless you count school projects. I’ve only received unofficial military training when Dad was off duty. I wasn’t trained as a Pathfinder. I’m a goddamn Recon Specialist!” Everything came out rapid-fire. “And if you know anything about the brain, by the way, human brains, hell human bodies, aren’t even done maturing and growing until fucking mid-twenties. You wanna know the part of the brain that’s in development?” I didn’t give time for anyone to answer. “The part that can make decisions based on what could happen in the future! Frontal cortex! Yeah, sure let’s put the youngest, smallest, inexperienced, weakest, most illogical, little shit in charge of what? Over 20,000 lives?” I gave a harsh chuckle. “Yeah, great fucking idea, Dad.” My breath quivered as I gasped.

It took a moment for anyone to respond. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.” Liam tried to cheer me up.

“If I wasn’t his daughter…” I started. “If I wasn’t his daughter, he would’ve left me for dead. Because he knows how important he is as Pathfinder. He would be insane to put someone with my  _ resume _ in charge.  _ Oh, wait. _ ” 

“Sara,” Lexi began, “take a breath. You need to calm down.” She was right, my face felt like it was on fire. Hell, my breathing was all over the damn place.

“Why? Why do I need to be Pathfinder? Why is it not Cora?” I asked in between short breaths. I was trying to slow down, but it was just too hard.

“Because you have SAM.” She responded. “Pathfinders are the only ones with SAM because SAM gives the Pathfinder, well, special abilities. Or really, enhances what the host already has. SAM also has a private channel with the Pathfinder and will only really obey to the Pathfinder’s orders.”

“But why does it have to be that way? Why can’t I just tell SAM to transfer to Cora?” I begged.  _ I cannot be in this position. I cannot lead, so many people will end up dead under my hands… _

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Liam crossed his arms. “I think you got this. You adapt quickly.”

“And it’s what he wanted.” Cora reminded me. “I won’t stand in his way. He wanted you to live.” She took a breath. “You have no choice but to be Pathfinder. It doesn’t mean that you’re alone. It is a serious job.”

“Yeah… No shit. I’m well aware.” I responded. My tears turned dry, everything just felt empty right now. I was able to calm down my breathing to an extent. Even though I was physically alive, emotionally I just felt dead. “There’s so much I don’t know.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Liam assured me. “If it helps, you’ve got me to lean on.” I looked away and at the floor.

“It’s all academic.” Lexi added. “And to answer your question about transferring SAM… Well, SAM’s linked to your mind on a deeper level now. Trying to untangle it could kill you. Not even SAM knows the safe route out.”

I suddenly felt limp. “Are you saying I cannot survive without SAM?”

She shook her head. “Wrong assumption. You can survive just fine without SAM. Just like you only need one kidney and not two. But, ripping it out of you without knowing the safest way, could more than likely kill you. SAM needed this deeper connection to be able to save and resurrect you.”

“I know this is tough but…” Cora started. “We need to start thinking about the next step. A lot of people are counting on us.”

“Is the Ark still drifting?” I asked in a dead voice. My sight was still looking away at the floor. 

Liam perked up. “That’s the thing. Whatever your dad did with the tower, it saved the day. Some sort of atmosphere scrubber.”

“The energy cloud thinned out.” Cora added. “We’re on our way to the rally point now. Should be at the Nexus soon.”

“Soon?” I looked up slightly. “How long was I out?”

“A few days, give or take.” Lexi answered. “And she needs to rest first.” She told the others.

Cora looked back at her as she walked towards the door. “She has two hours. We’ll need our Pathfinder for this.” She smiled back at me. I looked back at the floor. _ You don’t need a Pathfinder to talk to people. Besides, who are you talking back to the doctor? And if I have no choice but to be in charge, then why is she still trying to tell me what to do? Because you need to get up and do it, stop playing victim, we all lost today. Everyone is grieving, Sara, show some damn sympathy for once. The world doesn’t revolve around you. _

Cora motioned for everyone to leave the room, Liam stayed behind for a moment. “Oh, I uh, I checked on your brother, still no change. But if you can pull through, so can he.” He tried to give a smile. “A bit of your dad in both of you.” then left the room. I was now alone.  _ If you weren’t so bitter, maybe they would’ve shown some more sympathy to you. It’s your fault they were eager to leave the room. _

I heard SAM, more clear this time and no echo. “Your father will be missed.”

“Okay, so I’m not insane. How are you so clear right now?” I asked.

“This is our private channel.” SAM responded. “I shared it with him.”

_ What?  _ “He never mentioned that. I knew that Cora just did but… Can you read my thoughts?”

“It allowed me to know him better. And no, but I can read various brain wave activities.” There was some silence. “Alec wouldn’t want us to lose sight of the goal. He said pain emboldens our resolve. He’s insisted we grow stronger from his passing.”  _ Well I sure as hell feel emptier now than then. _

“What do I do, SAM?” I weeped.

There was a moment of silence before it responded, “I am not sure of the context you are referring to.”

“I don’t know either, SAM. This has all turned into some sort of hell and I feel completely alone.” I brought my knees up and hugged them.

“That is untrue, Pathfinder. You are surrounded by people.”

I scoffed. “Who barely know me. Cora’s probably pissed over something I had no control over...I don’t blame her but watch, she’ll take it out on me.”  _ Too bad, life goes on, Sara. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you can’t expect people to care. Don’t burden them with your troubles. _ I cried harder and tried to muffle myself by burying my face between my legs. “You’re an AI, SAM. Why did you allow Dad to do this?”

“I followed orders.” There was a pause in its response. “Much like how Cora had to follow his orders. Even though she could act on her own accord.”

“Did you warn him of his actions?”

“No. There was an insufficient amount of time.”  _ He died in vain. _

“Being dead would be easier than this. Cora would have her job. And people would be better off.” I muttered.

“And what of Scott?”

_ I’m living for others, am I now? No, SAM is just trying to help.  _ “I love him, and he’s the only family I had left. But…” I swallowed hard. “Sara Talia Ryder died when she became Pathfinder.”

“I do not understand that statement.”

“Easy.” It wasn’t easy to say. “The people need the Pathfinder and SAM to help them. They don’t need an anxious little girl that has no idea what the hell she is doing.”

“You are more than your anxiety and ignorance, Pathfinder.”

“Then don’t call me Pathfinder!” I yelled. “Because I am more than this stupid job title, too. If you truly believe that!” I felt so tired that all I would have to do is lay down anywhere and just close my eyes.  _ Close my eyes...sleep. Escape from the nightmares of reality. Then you’re weak. I was weak before all of this, which is exactly why I shouldn’t have gotten the job. What would Dad say if he saw you like this? Nothing, because he would still be alive as Pathfinder. Your mother? I… I don’t know… It’s been too long… _ My face was sore from the tense muscles, but despite that I went back to a harsh sob, soaking my pants where I placed my head.

“If you wish for me to call you something different, then I will do so.” It said.  _ Is it an ‘it’?  _

I sniffled.  _ Failure and useless would work just fine. _ “You can call me Sara or Ryder. I guess, on the field or something you can call me Pathfinder. Just… Not on our private channel.”

“Noted.”

I didn’t want to feel pity from anyone, I wanted to try. It was just so damn hard to look at anything as positive when the only people I loved and cared for are either still asleep or dead. That there was no home. I couldn’t go and eat fruit as it is my comfort food, because there was none currently. The home for humanity was dead. The first aliens we met hated us.  _ How much worse can it possibly get?  _ After a bit of silence and a break from my heavy crying I asked SAM, “Hey… What do you want to be called?”

“SAM.”

“No I mean… When I refer to you. Pronoun, I guess.”

“I do not have a preference. But most people, your father included, refer to me with male pronouns.” He responded.

I rested my chin on my knees. “Okay. I can do that.” I wiped my face with a sleeve. “I didn’t know, ya know, since you’re um…coding. Is that offensive?”

“You’re asking if I experience my own emotion.” He stated rather than asked.

“Yeah, kinda.” I sniffled.

“In a way, yes. I experience life through your stimuli and when you react to it, I try to understand why you might’ve reacted in that way. I do, however, form my own opinions on certain criteria.”

“Sorry if I did offend you, then. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing.” I positioned myself a bit.

“You did not. Though I appreciate the thought.” There was some silence again. “You may feel better if you take care of yourself.”

“I usually do, SAM. It’s just I have to find the motivation to do it. I feel like I’m just going to be running around in circles and become more frustrated with myself.”

“Start small.”

I placed my feet on the ground and crouched over. “What do you suppose I do, then?”

“I would recommend you to wash your face. You did receive a few wounds and it would be wise to not only clean them, but check up on them.”

I placed my hand on my face. I noticed a few bandages around my face. “H-How?”

“The glass on your helmet shattered. A few pieces had cut deep.” There was a pause. “Is there a problem, Sara?”

It was like the world was mocking me. Not only would I have psychological scars, but I’d have physical ones to lead me back to the emotional wounds.  _ And it would be everytime I look in the mirror. Every cut a symbol of when Dad died. A symbol that, if I wasn’t alive, he would be. _ Tears rolled down my face and I buried myself in my hands to sob once more. “I don’t want to be here, SAM. I wanna go home. I wanna hug Mom. I want to make Scott laugh. I wanna learn from Dad. I wanna be silly and stupid with my friends. I  _ hate _ it here.” Most of what I had said was muffled.

_ Damn, you sound like a whiny teenager. _ I cried harder, drowning out every other noise than the one in my head.  _ You came here on your own will.  _ I was shaking so much it felt like it came straight from my bones. My muscles were so tensed up and sore, but I was crying so hard that I couldn’t relax.  _ Maybe, if you paid attention instead of gawking at the sky, Dad would still be alive. This is your fault, Sara. Yours. _

_ This is my fault. _ I repeated over and over until it slipped out my mouth unconsciously. I felt my nails dig into my face, my toes curled in my shoes, my feet slid under the bed I was laying on. Every muscle was tense and contracting. “I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for this.”

No home. No foundation. No stability. No solid food. No well-known friends. No family.  _ Alone. By definition and in truth. Alone. _ My heart, a gaping hole. My hands grasping onto anything familiar, but nothing was there. I don’t want to die again, as it was a horrible experience. Terrifying. But living...feels just as terrifying and harsh. I just want to go back. Coming here was a huge mistake.  _ Why was I so stupid? Why did I think this was ever a good idea? Oh new worlds! Exploration and adventure! No, idiot! Idealistic idiot! Heartbreak is your reality now. You cry because you can’t handle the truth! _ My crying became much more vocal, almost like a scream. My head alternated between a pounding headache and being beaten by my own thoughts. Each passing moment the thoughts got louder and harsher, the pounding felt like it was beating my brain with a hammer. I heard my heartbeat within my head. It got faster and faster. Hyperventilating. Eyes squeezed shut. A hand was placed firmly on my shoulder. Then it moved to try and pry my hands away from my face. They knew.

A pinch that I felt throughout my arm got my attention. I felt a cold liquid pulse through. In mere seconds, my heart slowed down, and my muscles felt dead. With swollen eyes I looked at Lexi, who seemed more than worried.

She kneeled down next to me. “Ryder,” she sighed, “what happened?”

With a hoarse voice I responded, “The truth of reality settled in.”

“The truth doesn’t always hurt. What did you perceive as  _ truth _ ?”

“Dad would still be alive if I never came here.”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes, well, not entirely true. He needed help opening that door, someone would’ve taken your place. In any event, you are his daughter. I’m positive that he would’ve felt sad or even lonely if you never came here.”

“Scott, though.” 

“Everyone wakes up from cryo differently. He was slowly waking up when we ran into...whatever it was. He would still be in a coma. I’m sure Alec is more than happy that he got to see you live. Or from his point of view, get the chance to live.”

“I’m not ready, Lexi. The Hyperion needs a better Pathfinder. I can’t do this.”

She raised her brow. “And how are you so sure of that?”

I looked at her like she was insane. “Did you not see what I just did? I broke down because of a few scratches on my face. Like I could handle whatever else this galaxy decides to send my way.”

“Hmm...false.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“No one breaks down because of ‘scratches’. I’ve been in this field for a long time. And I know when my patients are belittling themselves. Self-inflicted emotional abuse.”

I relaxed a bit more, maybe because she saw right through me, maybe because of whatever she injected me with. “Yeah. I’ve had that ‘diagnosis’ for years now. Almost two decades.”

She sighed. “I know you want truth. Truth is, no one on this ship or on the Nexus is equipped to deal with what will be thrown at us. That is not to invalidate you, in fact it should validate all of us. The thing is, we are so focused on what could go wrong, we completely forget what could go right. It’s important to be ready for everything, that also includes the good things.”

“Examples?”

“Think about your favorite food. Maybe we find something a million times better here. Maybe the views will be beautiful across the different planets. Maybe we will meet a friendly alien species who would welcome us and maybe even our help. Maybe you’ll make another close friend, one considered a family member. That’s the thing about the unknown. Anything can happen. Which you choose which way you want to look at that fact. Positively or negatively.”

I scoffed. “Negatively apparently.”

“Remember, being 100% negative hold idealistic thoughts. Reality and the universe is neutral. It’s how you perceive it that makes it  _ your _ reality. And as a defence mechanism, your brain should start perceiving things a bit differently than before. You’re not more  _ real _ for being negative, that’s actually extremely unrealistic. The world isn’t out to get you, even though it might feel like that.” Her hand squeezed my shoulder.

“Why is it so hard to be positive?” I asked desperately.

“From what I know about humans, society and the mentality of teenager years are mostly to blame. You’re still young and growing, and your teenager years were only three years ago.”

“Huh?” Two you mean? Not counting the sleep.”

“Three, you’re 22, been that way for a few hours. Not counting the cryo.”

I slumped over. “Of course.”

“I know going forward will be extremely difficult. If you need someone to talk to, well, I’m here and I have a few degrees in this field.”

“Thanks. I might not sound it but, thanks.” I tried to smile at her.

“Need anything while I’m up?”

“Could you check my wounds on my face? I...I really don’t want to.”

She nodded and adjusted herself so she could clearly see my bandages. I felt slight pain as she peeled them off, and I saw the dried dark blood as she laid each one down. “You’re healing well. You only needed three stitches in the one by your eye. The others were close to needing stitches but not entirely.” She backed up to look at me in full. “I’ll need you to go and wash your face, and I’ll get clean and smaller bandages. They’re not fully healed.”

“Will they scar, Doc?”

She took a moment to answer, looking over them again. “More than likely, yes. The face can scar easily. But, good news is, you still have younger skin, and since you are 22 you aren’t exactly done growing yet. The skin is still thick, and your body hasn’t exactly started the aging process for the lack of better terms. I apologize, a lot is on my mind.”

“It’s fine. Does that mean that the scars will go away?”

“They will definitely become smaller and less noticeable as time goes on, but I wouldn’t say they would go away completely.”

My face was blank, I’m not sure if I could feel any emotion anymore at this point. Defensive mechanism maybe? “I guess I should wash up, then.” Getting up was a treat. Everything in my body ached, a couple of joints popped as I stood up, some felt good, others didn’t. My body detested any movement I made and I shuffled more than walked. 

I left the room with Lexi, her hand ghosted on my back in case I needed support or help. We had to split up so I could go to the bathroom and she could get the bandages. We agreed to meet back at SAM node.

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see myself. They were kind enough to change me into my  Initiative outfit which felt better on my skin than the under armor. I rolled up my sleeves and turned on the water. Only cold. Had to save energy for heating other more important things up, and I’m not exactly complaining. I’m weird and prefer cold water over warm, the only exception being in the showers. I noticed myself in front of the mirror, but I didn’t want to look. I bent over and held my breath as I splashed the cold water on my face. It felt good and refreshing. For a moment, I almost believed I was in my house again, and it was just another morning. The morning after a dare workout with my friend. Yeah, that’s why I was sore. Each splash of cold water was daring me to react with a sharp inhale. My control over my breath in response helped me feel more in power of myself. I felt a foundation returning. A very small one, but in the vast emptiness that I feel inside, the little foundation just screams out to me. The only scream that I like to hear, are the ones of hope and happiness. It’s little, but it’s a small light in a very dark room.

_I can look up. I can do this. I’m going to have to look at myself one way or another, might as well do it now. Like a bandaid, gotta do it quick and now. Get it over with._ The water automatically turned off and I let out a sigh. I closed my eyes only to open them when I knew my head was up. I wasn’t entirely sure what to think. My eyes were puffy and swollen, and I could see the wound that needed the three stitches by my right eye, mostly on my forehead and looked like it used to be more of a gash. It went over my eyebrow a bit, I already had a scar near the bridge of my nose on my eyebrow that caused the hair not to grow back. Got that one from a sky car accident when I was little. _Might as well just shave the brow at this point._ I chuckled because I thought about walking around with only one fuzzy brow and missing the other. _Well, you can’t see half of the brow anyways because my hair is usually in the way._ _Looks painful._ My finger went up to poke it to see if it really was painful because it was numb at the moment. I flinched because the direct touch did make it sting. _Yeah, still hurts._ But I went back because I was curious and wanted to investigate.

Looking at the rest of my face, I could see various bruising and swelling, and I noticed two other major cuts. One traveled across my right cheek as if a chunk of the glass decided to try and kiss my bones, though it was a cleaner cut than the one over my eye. The other one that was noticeable was on the left side of my face, and it went from the hairline, past the temple, and stopped at my jaw. Closer inspection revealed it was actually three separate cuts and it reminded me of a zig-zag more than a straight line down. There were minor cuts all around my face, a small one was added to my bottom lip. Almost didn’t notice that one because I already had a small one there, again from the sky car accident.  _ Heh, there you go little buddy, you have a friend now. I shouldn’t be mad at the scars, it will be a healed wound. _ I sniffled.  _ I’ll get there. I think. _ Trying to think positive was the least I could do. My face had pretty much air dried, but I pat it down with a small towel to make applying the bandages easier. I walked back to SAM node.

Lexi was already there, and she applied the clean and smaller bandages with ease. “When you cleaned it, did it sting or hurt at all?”

“Not when I cleaned it, no.”

“When you dried it?”   
“No. I did poke it though, and that stung a bit.”

She took a step back and looked at me with disappointment then shook her head. “Please don’t poke your wounds. Mess with them too much and they can reopen.”

“I know. I know. I was only curious. I stopped quickly though, I promise.”

“SAM?”

Over her comm I heard his voice in reply. “She stopped in relatively short time.”

“Thanks, SAM.” She replied. “The swelling did go down since I took off the bandages. Cold water?”   
“Yeah.”

“Good call.” She looked me over one last time. “Well, you’re all set. I think we’re getting close to the Nexus by the way. Just...a heads up.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are my two hours up?” I made the words come out mockingly.

“No.”

“SAM tell me when it is. I need to just...stay away from people. Um, you’re fine, Lexi.”

She chuckled. “Appreciate it. But I do need to go back. If you need someone, don’t hesitate to call me over the omni-tool. You’re a priority. Both physically and mentally.”

“Not sure how to feel about that.”

“You went through a lot in a very short amount of time. You did die. Everyone else I’m working with are just people waking up from cryo. Which, they are important, but they didn’t undergo severe trauma by waking up.”

“Wait until the reality of not being able to go home really sets in.”

“I won’t.” She stood up. “I don’t wait for things to go wrong before I act.” She walked towards the door. “Remember, contact me if you need anything.” I nodded and she left.

I laid back down on my bed, the head faced the main database of SAM. He was swirling in a lightish blue ball-like structure as a hologram behind the main terminal that was SAM. The hologram gives a visual representation on how SAM is doing and gives a sort of face to look at when people talk to him. The fact the hologram is up and running and illuminating the room means that SAM is also up and running. 

“Hey, SAM?” I mumbled.

“Yes, Sara?”

“When Dad was making you and had you before coming here, what was his priority?” I closed my eyes.

“Some of my data is locked. I am not able to tell you.”

My brows furrowed and I sat up. “What do you mean?”

“Alec put a lock on certain memories. I cannot access some inquiries. Perhaps Alec put the blocks in place until you were ready to hear them.”

It took me a moment to respond. “How will you know when I’m ready to hear it?”

“Uncertain. Currently looking more into the situation.” 

_ Why would Dad hide things from me? Especially about his past? Well, he was an N7, always responding with things being on a need to know basis. But, N7s don’t exist in Andromeda, and he was discharged from service, and well...he’s dead. Maybe the data was more intended for Scott since he was military? Do I have to prove myself? Ugh, really? This again? Dad, why couldn’t you just respect my choice in not joining? _ “Hey, SAM?”

“Yes, Sara?”

“Do you think...well, with your data and statistics and such. Do you think I will be okay?”

“May you elaborate?”

“Can I do the job as Pathfinder? Can I handle this responsibility? Will I lose myself to this job?”

“Uncertain. People are unpredictable in reference to the future. Currently, you need preparation and training.”

I sighed. “Being a chosen one sucks. Feels like a cliche story. Why me? Plenty of others out there. I’m not the only one that can read data and hold a gun.”

“You are correct. Though, me being ingrained into your psychology makes it difficult for another person to become Pathfinder and keep you alive.”

“Then, find out ways you can safely disconnect from me. If I don’t need to rely on you to breathe and the disconnection is the problem, then I want you to focus on that. It is unwise and extremely illogical to have me in charge.”

“Are you sure, Sara?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, SAM. I’m sure. Figure out a way to disconnect from me. I’m more useful in another field rather than being a Pathfinder. This isn’t because of you, by the way, I appreciate you. I’m just thinking of well...the rest of the population.”

“Thank you. I will let you know when I have found a way to safely disconnect.”

“Thank you, SAM. This is more reassuring than you realize. I think it’ll make Cora happy, too.” I sat back up and reached over for Dad’s helmet. Small pieces of paper fell out as I brought it over to me. I picked them up and realised they were pictures, pictures of us. The family. I sniffled and let a smile form across my lips.  _ He really does care. _ Four family pictures, each with all four of us in them. Dad, Mom, Scott, and I. Three of them were selfies and only one was a more professional shoot. I laid down and closed my eyes, my hands holding the group of pictures over my heart. It didn’t take me long to drift off.

_ I’m in a dark room. Instinctively, I reach for a switch, the light never came on. A strong feeling of panic washed over me as I frantically try to turn on the lights. I need it on, I need it on. Over and over, the motion becoming faster and faster. My breathing and thoughts were rapid. I need the light. Where is the light? Light...light...light...light. It was insanity. Panic. It wasn’t a verb. It was a noun. I am panic. Panic is me. Where is the light? I need the light! I passed out, my heart was beating too fast. I heard my name in a hoarse and angry voice. It was the alien’s voice. I saw him. My dad had the voice and he marched over to me, yelling my name. He stopped at a mirror and shot it. I called for him. He looked at me then fell to the ground. I ran over. No. It was like I was on a treadmill. My running didn’t get me anywhere. Panic. I ran faster. Panic. Panic. Panic. Where’s the light? _

I awoke. I lifted my knees up to my chest and rolled over. I started to cry again, I had a need for someone, anyone, to come up and hug me. I heard the door open and it startled me.

“You alright, Ryder?” Liam asked me, accompanied by Cora.

I sniffled. “Nightmare. Sorta. I took a nap.”

“We need you on deck. We will be docking the Nexus shortly.” Cora stood up straight, putting her hands behind her back.

_ I don’t get why I’m needed. Communication maybe? _ I slowly sat up, resting my elbows on my knees. “Okay.” I said mindlessly. They watched as I sorely stood up and waddle walked to them.

Cora nodded. “It’s nice to see you up, Pathfinder.”

That name went in one ear and out the other.

I walked with Cora and Liam up to the bridge where Captain Dunn was observing. Dunn turned around and greeted us. “Ryder, good to see you on your feet. We’re at the Nexus.” I leaned on the balcony rail and met her eye to eye, well, not in height. I couldn’t say anything, nothing came to mind. We looked out the window and in the distance there was a large space station, two long segments parallel with each other connected by a circular rim in the middle of both segments. “It’s the forward hub for the entire Andromeda Initiative. The asari, salarian, and turian arks should be there, too.” They, and we were in orbit with a gas giant. I could tell from the atmosphere.

I leaned against the railing with both hands. “Let’s hope they’ve had better luck.” I said dryly.

“Starting our approach now.” The pilot confirmed.

Liam walked down the ramp a bit. “It’s almost as big as the Citadel back home.” He was quite excited. I would be too, if it wasn’t for recent events. He was also right, the size of the Ark was but a pin needle compared to the Nexus.

“Nexus control, this is Ark Hyperion requesting docking clearances.” The pilot spoke over the comm. There was a moment of silence before she turned to look at the captain. “Captain, I’m only getting their automated approach channel, not a live person.”  _ Great… just great. _

“Well like it or not, we’re here. Take us in.” Dunn ordered.

Cora stepped forward. “Construction should’ve been finished by now.” Her brows were furrowed. She was right, there were many  parts that I could see that were still just beams at this point. Not only that, but we were the only ark here. We were fairly close to the docking bay at the circular rim.

“Could be worse.” Liam said in a heartbeat.

My blood boiled at that statement, my head snapped to look over at him. “How? Habitat 7’s a bust, we might’ve started a war with the first aliens we met, and our Pathfinder’s dead.  _ This _ better fucking be rock bottom.” I counted on my fingers as I read off the mind list.

“Green across the board.” The pilot pulled us into dock. I could feel the shifts in gears and our connection with the Nexus. “Docking initiated.” Everything took a minute to settle. I could hear engines being turned off, and other things starting to work.

Dunn looked at me. “All right. I got us here. Good luck, Pathfinder.” I cringed when I heard her call me that.

_ Alright… _

_ Here we go. _

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> This was originally just going to be a private fic, but with support of friends and the recent events to fall upon BioWare and Andromeda, I have decided to do a public upload of this. Original characters are not a full self-insert but inspired by a lot of things that I do or have happened to me. A lot of things will be taken directly from BioWare's Mass Effect: Andromeda, all rights belong to them.


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